Home isolation and its impact on the physical activity of children in the primary stage

Abstract

Home isolation is one of the important measures to confront the COVID-19 pandemic that governments imposed on the whole world, including the Iraqi government, in order to reduce the spread of the disease among people and preserve public health. Although it is an effective measure against this disease, it has several negatives, including its impact on activity. Physical activity for humanity in general and children in particular, as a long period of sitting at home leads to lack of movement, decreased physical activity, increased periods of general inactivity, and sitting in front of screens for long periods, which negatively affected the psychological state of the child, in addition to a significant increase in children’s weight. Hence the idea of ​​the research came to study the effect of home isolation on physical activity, by presenting several questions related to the research variables from the point of view of parents, and the research hypotheses were chosen using a set of statistical methods that were analyzed in SPSS and using Google Drive models. The electronic questionnaire form was published on social media (facebook, whatsapp), and the researcher reached a set of conclusions, the most important of which was home isolation that led to a significant decrease in children’s physical activity in general, and that the closure of schools and entertainment centers had significant negative effects on children’s physical activity. The researcher recommends that parents of children participate in some simple and entertaining motor games that can be performed at home, which increase physical activity and improve the psychological state of children.