According to a documentary directed by former Brigham Young University film student Steven Greenstreet, the way schools have reacted to the federal law contributes to a national childhood obesity epidemic. So do a lot of other factors that play out on the schools' stages.

Greenstreet, director of the award-winning documentary "This Divided State," about filmmaker Michael Moore's 2004 visit to Utah Valley State College, is puttin…

It is the position of the National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE) that all elementary school children should be provided with at least one daily period of recess of at least 20 minutes in length. Read more...

Volunteers in communities across the nation united in late October to perform community service projects for Make A Difference Day. The local Make a Difference Day event is led by the Volunteer Resource Center of SCV in cooperation with the city of Santa Clarita in Southern CA. Whenever there are large groups of children around, playgrounds are anything but peaceful. To address the issues of conflicts in games, bullying and the rise of childh…

Champions for Healthy Kids, a grant program introduced five years ago to encourage kids to eat healthy and stay active, is now accepting grant applications for 2008. The program is open to schools and community groups with innovative programs aimed at improving youth nutrition and fitness. The entry deadline is Jan. 15, 2008. Download application. The program is a partnership of the General Mills (NYSE: GIS) Foundation, the American Dietetic As…

Parents waiting to know if the Wii Games are a good investment for getting kids moving can find the answer in last week's release of the British Medical Journal.

Put simply. The Wii Games result in a wee amount of physical activity.

Parents are fooling themselves if they hope Nintendo's Wii active games console, which uses a wireless hand held controller to replicate athletic movement, will stop their youngster becoming obese, a study s…

The nation's second largest school system (Los Angeles Unified School District) has launched a Physical Education Campaign: Helping Students Move More, Eat Well, Stay Healthy, Do Their Best in School.

Components of the Campaign include:

First, a 55:1 cap on class size. WOW. 55 students to one teacher??? This seems outrageous. How can one teacher teacher 55 students?

Second, twenty-a-day: enforce California Education Code which mandates …

A Florida judge over turned a jury's $4 million award to a elementary school age boy that was bullied at recess. The judge cut the award to $600,000.

Hillsborough County Circuit Judge William Levens wrote in his order that the boy's attorney delivered an "improper and unfairly prejudicial" closing argument. The attorney's words, Levens wrote, were inflammatory and focused on punishment rather than the facts of the case.

On J…

I live on what's called "the Westside" of Los Angeles. Our local schools are in the 600 school Los Angeles Unified School District. My local elementary school called Kentwood Elementary is surrounded by 6 foot tall fences. On weekend and after school the school yard and playgrounds (like the majority of LAUSD schools) are closed and empty.

Slowly - way too slowly - but surely, Los Angeles city and school leaders are inching tow…

Check out the Bullying UK website for bullying resources for schools, parents, students . Sign up for their online newsletter or create and print a bullying poster.

Bullying UK is sponsoring Teachers TV in Anti-Bullying Week. These videos are playing as part of every web video we produce and can be seen on Teachers.TV Check out Nick Hall's inspirational song Sticks & Stones.

Amy Heuer; Bismarck, The Jamestown Sun

Two recent studies published by the New England Journal of Medicine on childhood obesity provide greater evidence that children are in dire need of quality physical education programs in schools. Overweight children have an increased risk for heart disease in adulthood as early as age 25, and are prone to premature heart attacks and strokes. Bottom line, our children are in trouble, and particularly here in …

Peaceful Playgrounds research has suggested that adding more consumable equipment like balls, bean bags and jump ropes to playgrounds results in more active children. (Peaceful Playgrounds Research)

A study published in the January 2008 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine further substantiates that claim. Researchers at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health examined environmental factors that encourage child…

The CDC convened a panel of experts to evaluate the evidence for the beneficial effects of physical activity on a broad range of health outcomes and behaviors, including body fat content (adiposity) in school-aged youth, ages 6 to 18. The experts based their evaluation on more than 850 relevant scientific studies. Here we discuss only those findings related to overweight or obesity.

The panelists noted that comparing the findings among studies wa…

A new UCLA study has found that elementary schools can significantly increase the frequency of fruit and vegetable consumption among low-income students by providing a lunch salad bar.

The findings, published in the December issue of the international peer-reviewed journal Public Health Nutrition, show that the frequency of students' fruit and vegetable consumption increased significantly — from 2.97 to 4.09 times daily — after a salad bar w…

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — Fitness research shows that when a computer talks the talk, even couch potatoes can be persuaded to walk the walk. Researchers at Stanford University, who studied sedentary people for a year, found that automated exercise reminder phone calls had about the same get-up-and-go power as calls from human counselors.

"The recording had a very nice, kind of cheerleader voice. It sounded very natural," said study partic…

California public school students are slightly trimmer and fitter than they were a year ago, but many still are unable to meet the state's basic level of fitness, according to figures released Thursday by the state Department of Education. And students in Los Angeles, especially high school students, were significantly less fit than the state average.

About 60% of students in fifth, seventh and ninth grades statewide passed an aerobic fitness…

Charles Kelly
The Arizona Republic

Your tax-credit donation can aid students in the Peoria Unified School District in many ways.

Rae Conelley, principal at Alta Loma Elementary School, can list a variety of them.

"We have used tax-credit money for so many opportunities that we might never have had," Conelley said. "The money that our patrons donate to us through the Arizona Tax Credit system has been used for programs that keep our ch…

There are a number of gift ideas to get sedentary children of all age active, says a Purdue University childhood fitness expert.

"The key is to find gifts that also motivate the entire family to move," says Carole DeHaven, a continuing lecturer in the Department of Health and Kinesiology. "Parents are the gatekeepers for healthy living. By providing activities that children enjoy, along with healthy food choices, we can help…

A clinical report from the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends counteracting increased stress with more play, “which is essential to development because it contributes to the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being of children and youth.” Although play for children might seem intuitive, it is clear Americans must make play a priority in children’s lives.

While doctors are recommending that children spend more time playing, som…

High-tech "bully buttons" are being installed in some Australian schools so students can alert educators and trigger video cameras to record such incidents. "If students are confronted with footage then there can be very little denial, but it also gives us a clearer perspective of what happened because kids often remember their part but don't have an overall perspective," said Thomas Carr College deputy principal Vera Tre…

More US adults are making fitness a habit, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The percentage of adults reporting regular exercise or physical activity jumped nearly 9% from 2001 to 2005, the CDC says. The findings come from telephone surveys of more than 205,000 adults in 2001 and more than 356,000 adults in 2005. Participants answered questions about how often and how long they got moderate or vigorous physical activit…

A group of concerned parents met with state Assemblyman Joseph Malone (R-Ocean, Monmouth, Burlington, Mercer) in his office in Jackson on Nov. 21 to discuss the idea of making student recess mandatory in all New Jersey school districts.

During the meeting Malone presented the parents with a proposed bill that would establish a task force to examine the issue of school recess.

Malone asked the parents to review the bill he said he would propose in…