Benefits of Soccer in Early Childhood Education Programs

Physical development is a domain that is addressed in any quality early childhood program.  Although children in these programs are under six years of age and are often too young to display serious athletic prowess, the benefits are great.

Playing soccer and practicing ball skills enables children to see that practice does lead to improvement and that effort equates to success.  This builds self-esteem and confidence.  

Additional benefits of soccer include:

• Improving language and social skills
• Lowering body fat
• Improving cardiovascular fitness
• Muscle toning
• Improving focus
• Building eye-hand coordination
• Spatial awareness
• Improving grasping skills
• Improving balance
• Promoting teamwork and cooperative play
• Reducing stress
• Instilling discipline
• Promoting sportsmanship
• Teaching the art of losing gracefully 

Soccer combines speed, strength, and skill and is a great introduction to team sports.The fundamentals include dribbling, shooting, running, and kicking.   By age two, children should be able to kick a ball forward for 3 feet in a straight line. Additionally, they should be able to stand and hold arms in front with palms face up in anticipation of catching a ball.  This will increase to a distance of 6 feet by age 3.  At this time, using opposing arm and leg movements becomes more fluid. Skills continue to develop with age.

Soccer is especially useful to increase engagement for those that are not native English speakers or those with communication delays.  As the old adage states, “Actions speak louder than words.”  Watching facial expressions and reactions during play translates clearly.

If your early childhood program does not offer soccer, you can reach out to your local township to learn about community leagues.  Teamwork does indeed make the dream work!  Collaboration and cooperation learned at an early age leads to future success!

Our two main locations are in Newtown and Warrington and we support the Doylestown area.