Physical Activity and Nutrition During Kindergarten and Later Academic Achievement

Abstract

The current study investigated the relationship between kindergarten physical activity, kindergarten nutrition, and fourth grade academic achievement. The study utilized a publicly available national data set, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten 2010-2011 (ECSL-K2011). The use of this dataset allowed for the examination of the longitudinal effects of physical activity and nutrition as well as the generalization of the results. Scales were created for the kindergarten physical activity and nutrition variables since they do not exist in the original dataset. The dependent variable was the academic achievement of the students during fourth grade. Control variables were gender, SES, race, and kindergarten achievement. Structural equation modeling was used to investigate the relationships among the variables. Physical activity during the kindergarten year was found to have a significant direct effect on fourth grade achievement but with higher activity levels predicting lower achievement. Although there is a current focus on encouraging children to be active, these findings suggest that activity level may at times take away from an academic focus. Kindergarten nutrition was not related to fourth grade achievement. Kindergarten achievement was highly related to fourth grade achievement and had a positive relationship with physical activity and nutrition. Additionally, girls had lower fourth grade achievement than boys, but this may have been because there was a greater focus on mathematics and science in measuring achievement in the study. Further longitudinal research in this field would be needed to better understand the impacts that physical activity and nutrition have on children’s academics and well-being as a whole.