Looking for ways to reduce childhood obesity? Here's the good news. Schools make a difference. Yet another study indicates that school policies have a positive effect on children's eating. A new study released in Sweden by the medical university Karolinska Institute indicates that childhood obesity rates fell by 6 percent for kids from 6-10 year olds when their school introduced specific rules for sweets and food/drinks. The research called: STOPP (Stockholm Obesity Prevention Project) indicates that programs designed to reduce the increasing obesity can be carried out successfully in schools. The best part. No increase is existing budgets.
The four year study yeilded interesting results:
Control school saw a 3% increase in childhood obesity rates and the intervention schools which limited sweets etc, saw a 6% decrease in overweight children. For more information on the: Stockholm Obesity Prevention Project
Nutrition is one side of the coin and physical activity is the other. How can we get children more physical active in schools? Visit Peaceful Playgrounds Research to learn how schools are adding markings to their playgrounds and getting kids moving.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Axe Sweets in School and Kids Benefit
The power of suggestion... Tips for getting kids to eat healthy.
Children’s fruit consumption was measured in two schools by observation. In the intervention school, cafeteria workers provided the verbal prompt, “Would you like fruit or juice with your lunch?” as the children stood in line in front of the fruit serving options. The control school had the same fruit and 100% juice options available, but the cafeteria workers did not provide a verbal prompt to take a fruit serving. Two variables were assessed: (1) Did children leave the lunch line with a fruit serving on their trays? and (2) Did they subsequently eat the fruit serving?
Results:
The average percentage of children who took a fruit serving was 60% in the control school and 90% in the intervention school. In both schools, approximately 80% of children ate the fruit on their tray. As a result, nearly 70% of the children in the intervention school consumed a fruit serving at lunch, while fewer than 40% did so in the control school.
Conclusion:
A simple verbal prompt appears to have a significant impact on the likelihood that children will take, and subsequently consume, a fruit serving as part of their purchased school lunch. If these findings are replicated, policymakers may consider adding verbal prompts to the serving policy of the NSLP in an effort to increase fruit consumption among school children.
Full text of research found at: http://www.ijbnpa.org/content/4/1/6
International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity 2007
Research conducted at Yale University
For additional activities on teaching children about nutritional concepts such as: Calories: How Much is Enough?; Portion Sizes: Am I Eating too Much?; and When Bigger is Not Better: Portion Sizes. Visit We Count Walking Program which includes Education Newsletters for Parents and Students along with a teacher guide to mini lessons on the above topics.
Children's Walking Program
As the weather gets warmer and we all start to spend more time outside it’s a good opportunity for us AND the children we supervise to ensure we are getting a healthy amount of physical activity.
Children need to be active every day to promote their healthy growth and development. We also know that people who establish a healthy lifestyle pattern at a young age will carry those habits with them into adulthood.
A healthy lifestyle is something we can all benefit from and our children deserve to be given the opportunity to develop healthy lifelong habits.
Need some physical activity and nutrition ideas for teaching children? Visit our website at :
http://www.peacefulplaygrounds.com/pedometers.htm The We Count Walking program is an innovative new program designed to get kids fit with the slogan, " Get Fit, Don't Sit."
Send for your free information packet today. info@peacefulplaygrounds.com
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Sunset school celebrates Peaceful Playground
Students and teachers held a groundbreaking for the school's new Peaceful Playground Program Tuesday morning. The school's parent council funded the program, which cost almost $10,000, Principal Rita London said.
The Sunset playground now has a blacktop area featuring colorful markings, new games and equipment. The project isn't complete, but there were enough games in place to get going Tuesday.
"The whole point is for there to be enough activity during playtime," London said. "When the kids are busy, there's less fussing and fighting."
The program comes with detailed lesson plans and videos designed to encourage conflict resolution. "Rock, paper, scissors" is often the preferred method of conflict resolution. The games are fun and, if they happen to meet state benchmarks, so much the better.
Students at Sunset take a 15 minute recess in the morning, and they also get to go outside during lunch. The students have physical education once a week, and coach Julie Meadors will instruct them on the lessons provided. Responsible students will then be allowed to check out equipment.
Sunset custodian Adam Munoz suggested holding the ribbon cutting, London said. Constructors Inc., Garden Mart and CMS plumber Bennie Cummings all also helped make the project possible.
For more information, visit Peaceful Playgrounds
Is PE a waste of time?
How much energy children expend may be determined by their genes, a study suggests, implying that they find their own activity level no matter what we tell them to do
Chloe Harris prefers reading to sport and would rather travel to school by car than walk. Sean Bowden does at least 13 hours of exercise a week, including basketball, football, swimming and PE, and would take on more if his parents let him. Yet analysis indicates that Sean does just one minute more moderate or vigorous physical activity a week than Chloe.
These two 11-year-olds from Plymouth — and 300 others like them — may force us to rethink our ideas on children and exercise, as well as on the origins of obesity.
For the past seven years the EarlyBird Diabetes Study, based at Derriford Hospital, Plymouth, has monitored the children’s activity levels and health in an attempt to track the childhood roots of diabetes. It has found, to almost universal astonishment, that children’s activity levels are governed not by the number of PE lessons in the school time-table, or even by the sport they do in their own time, but by an internal mechanism that may be preset before birth. In other words, how much energy children expend may be determined by their genes.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Physical Activity in Children Linked to Motor Abilities
Boys and girls who have better motor abilities are more physically active and less likely to be sedentary than children with poorer coordination, research conducted with children between the ages of 8 and 10 at the University at Buffalo has shown. Results of the study appear in the December issue of the journal Pediatrics. For the article visit: http://www.buffalo.edu/news/fast-execute.cgi/article-page.html?article=83120009
"It was particularly interesting that children in the highest quartile of motor proficiency had an average of 18 minutes-per-day more moderate-to-vigorous physical activity than youth in the lower quartiles," said Wrotniak. "If we could improve coordination in children in the lower quartiles, they may be more likely to increase their physical activity."
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Play and Brain Development Discussed in Running Start
According to Rae Pica, author of A Running Start: How Play, Physical Activity and Free Time Create a Successful Child, "Today, we have considerable research supporting that . . . movement, play, and physical activity contribute to brain and intellectual development." Too often, she contends, we’re so focused on "achievement" and "competition" that we’re not allowing our children just to have their childhoods. We buy them the most high-tech gadgets and hurry them from one class to another, but "old-fashioned play and physical experiences offer the best opportunities for brain development"—NOT "the latest gadgets and gear."
In A Running Start, Rae Pica, an internationally recognized educational consultant in early childhood and movement education, shares her techniques for raising children "with the right balance of free play and structured activity." Topics include:
Keeping It Real: How Kids Really Learn
Ready or Not, Here Come Organized Sports
Helping Your Child Master Movement
The Real Standards for "Smart"
Is Your Child Playing Enough at School?
Finding the Right Organized Activity Program
You’ve Gotta Have Heart: Why Compassion Matters More Than Competition
Finding Creatures in the Clouds: The Value of Downtime
Getting Back on Track: Family First
You might recall Rea's previous work as she was host and co-creator of "Move for a Minute," produced by New Hampshire Public, TV and broadcast nationwide, from 1985-89.
Exercise is a key to academic excellence
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It turns out that physical activity can improve not just kids' health, but also their grades. A study released by the American College of Sports Medicine found that 20 minutes of vigorous activity at least three days every week was needed for children to excel academically.
"Physical activity may reduce boredom and increase attention span and concentration," says Dawn Coe, lead author of the study and assistant professor of exercise science at Grand Valley State University. "Increased activity levels may also lead to higher self-esteem. And all of these factors may play a role in the relationship between physical activity and academic performance."
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Dash is collecting Wellness Policies and Successful Physical Activity Program Information
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH) in collaboration with the Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity (DNPA), the CDC Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJ) are undertaking a collaborative project to identify and assess policies or programs that have been implemented with apparent success in improving the eating habits and physical activity levels of children ages 3-17.
In each year of the two-year project, DASH, DNPA, and RWJ will each select an obesity prevention content area on which to focus efforts to identify potentially effective, innovative policies or programs. DASH has selected local wellness policies as it’s year-one content area. CDC staff will identify candidate policies that meet specific selection criteria including innovativeness, potential for impact, and feasibility, and an expert panel will identify those that show the greatest likelihood of effectiveness. Evaluability assessments (consisting of two to three day site visits), will be conducted on those policies selected by the expert panel to determine whether a rigorous evaluation study is feasible.
We are asking for your assistance in identifying districts in which schools are implementing local wellness policies this school year. We are accepting nominations of school districts that are implementing innovative local wellness policies. The nomination should include the state, school district, a name and contact information for a district contact, and a little information about the wellness policy.
Submit nominations to Seraphine Pitt Barnes (spe6@cdc.gov). The submission deadline is Tuesday, May 1, 2007.
If you would like additional information on this project please contact Seraphine Pitt Barnes (spe6@cdc.gov, 770-488-6115) or Leah Robin (ler7@cdc.gov, 770-488-6156).
Thanks for your help on this important project.
Seraphine
_________________________________
Seraphine Pitt Barnes, Ph.D., MPH, CHES
CDC Foundation Fellow
Phone: 770.488.6115
E-mail: SPittBarnes@cdc.gov
Playgrounds as obesity weapon
Girls who do not live within a half-mile radius of a school playground that is accessible when school is not in session have a 3-percent higher body mass index than girls who do have playgrounds within a half mile of where they live. Each additional open playground resulted in further weight decrease, according to a study of 1,556 sixth-grade girls in six metropolitan areas by the RAND Corp. appearing in the May volume of the journal Preventive Medicine. That means that an average-weight 5-foot-tall girl in Louisiana would weigh about 3.2 pounds less for every open school playground in her neighborhood. "We think there's an opportunity to use schools as a means of intervention," study author Molly Scott, a research analyst at RAND, told United Press International.
A nearly free resource in the obesity crisis is the local school or park playground according to a study released by the Rand Research Corporation.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
CA Physical Education Teacher Incentive Funding
The California PE Teacher Incentive Funding supports ongoing incentive grants for school districts to hire more credentialed physical education teachers in elementary and middle schools, (K-8th grade). The purpose of the program is to help address the rising incidence of obesity and its effects by ensuring that schools have trained experts to provide the required number of instructional minutes in physical education. The funds are to be used to hire credentialed staff to help kids develop healthy life-long exercise habits.
| $35,000 per school site | |
| Match Requirement | No |
|---|---|
| Allocation Formula | Recipients are randomly selected and funding is equitably distributed based on the type of school, size, and geographic location. |
APPLICATION DEADLINE MAY 3, 2007
TV-Turnoff Week is April 23-29, 2007.
TV-Turnoff Network is a nonprofit organization that encourages children and adults to watch much less television in order to promote healthier lives and communities. TV-Turnoff Week is April 23-29, 2007.
Go to: http://www.tvturnoff.org/ to find interesting fact sheets, a free 30 page online activity book, and 101 screen-free activities you can use. Learn about TV's effect on our health, family time, and children's academic success and share it with your students and their families.
Why Turn off the TV?
Television cuts into family time, harms our children's ability to read and succeed in school, and contributes to unhealthy lifestyles and obesity. Here are just a few of the facts:
- On average, children in the US will spend more time in front of the television (1,023 hours) than in school this year (900 hours).
- Forty percent of Americans frequently or always watch television during dinner.
- As US Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher said at the Kick Off of TV-Turnoff Week 2001, "We are raising the most overweight generation of youngsters in American history...This week is about saving lives."
Don't forget to download your, "Turn Off TV Week Certificate of Achievement."
Download from: http://www.tvturnoff.org/
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
School Violence-Fears vs Facts
The shootings yesterday at Virginia Tech bring to the forefront the issue of school violence. One might jump to conclusions and assume that school violence is on the rise. However, University of Virginia psychologist Dewey Cornell the director of the Virginia Youth Violence Project, suggests otherwise in an interview in October 2006.
Dewey Cornell: The recent school shootings have aroused a lot of fear and concern. There have been news reports that school violence is increasing. Parents are worried that their children will not be safe. What I want to emphasize is that 2-3 cases do not make a trend. We have 119,000 public schools in the U.S. The larger national trends are down, not up. Whenever we hear about a terrible crime, it creates the perception that it is increasing. Studies show that school homicides and violence in general has been declining for ten years. This is the good news that you never hear about. For more information on school violence and Cornell's book on Fears vs Facts visit the Virginia Youth Violence Project. http://youthviolence.edschool.virginia.edu/
Cornell points out two important facts:
- There is more danger driving to school than being in school
- Schools are safer than homes, statistically.
A transcript of the entire interview can be found at: http://www.courttv.com/chat/transcripts/2006/1004schoolshootings-cornell.html
Post your comments:
Are schools safer today?
What role can schools play in keeping children safe?
What actions have you taken to reassure parents that their children are safe?
Saturday, April 7, 2007
PHIT & PEP Bills- Federal Legislation
National Health-Through-Fitness Day in March a success. Advocates walked the halls of Congress campaigning for two physical activity initiatives - the Carol M. White Physical Education Program (PEP) and the PHIT (Personal Health Investment Today) Bill.
PEP provides grants to local school districts to purchase equipment and train teachers in innovative physical education methods. The PEP program has successfully enhanced K-12 physical education programs across the country through grants used for training in state-of-the-art health and wellness-based physical education methods which include the addition of new technology such as heart-rate monitors, pedometers, and the acquisition of state-of-the-art PE equipment and facilities.
The PHIT Bill would change current federal tax law to allow for the use of pre-tax dollars to cover expenses related to sports, fitness and other physical activities. Americans could invest up to $1,000 annually to pay for physical activities by investing money in existing pre-tax Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA), Health Savings Accounts (HSA), Medical Savings Accounts (MSA), and/or medical reimbursement arrangements. PHIT would only expand the eligible expenses...it would not increase contribution limits to these accounts.
The consortium asked Congress to approve level funding for PEP in Fiscal Year 2008 -- $73 million. The PHIT Bill, which was introduced this January by U.S. Representative Jerry Weller (R-IL), is in its infancy and needs additional sponsors in both the House and the Senate.
Play Nice Newsletter
This is the spot for your questions and discussions around topics covered in the Play Nice Newsletter. I hope you'll take advantage of your opportunity to visit often.
Federal Funding Proposed for Physical Education
Wamp, Simmons pump up exercise for school kids. U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., joined by fitness guru Richard Simmons, on unveiled House legislation aimed at making physical education a part of the federal No Child Left Behind education law’s core curriculum. This year Congress must reauthorize the measure, which uses annual standardized tests to hold schools accountable in science and math. He said the lack of physical activity among the nation’s youth is causing childhood obesity to skyrocket and leading to increased cases of type 2 diabetes and other health problems. Nationwide the rate of child-hood obesity has more than tripled for children between ages 6 and 11, according to a 2005 federal government report. Despite these numbers, schools are cutting back on their physical education budgets because of a need for greater investment in math, reading and science, Rep. Wamp said. But he added that students cannot learn those subjects if they are not healthy. The House bill would amend No Child Left Behind to provide a national guideline for minimum standards for health and fitness in schools. It also would require physical education assessments for students starting in the 2009-10 school year. The bill met with some skepticism from congressional lawmakers, but U.S. Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., said the addition of physical education is important because there are health and economic costs associated with obesity that cannot be ignored. He said obesity costs the U.S. economy $100 billion each year. Rep. Kind, a member of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, said more fit students would lead to longer attention spans, fewer sick days and higher graduation rates. If enacted the measure would cost $30 million in 2009, $70 million in 2010 and $100 million a year from 2011 through 2013, according to estimates. The bill also would create a best-practices model for schools in the Department of Education and set up a competitive grant program for state agencies seeking to revise their physical education programs. -Edward Lee Pitts, Washington Bureau
PP Supported Organizations
Peaceful Playgrounds is pleased to support local community events planned by Hands On Inland Empire and LA Works. Both organizations support local schools in the Southern CA area.
One such example is Hands On Inland Empire Day! On June 9th, hundreds of volunteers will gather at multiple project sites in Redlands, Yucaipa, Ontario, Victorville and Pomona to enrich our schools and raise money for Inland Empire United Way's Hands On Inland Empire.
Picture provided by Hands on Inland Empire.
CA Arts, Music, and Physical Education Funding $500
The $500 Million in funds provide Districts/schools in California with an important one-time opportunity to invest in physical education and visual and performing arts instructional programs. Funds may be used for professional development, equipment, and supplies for physical education and visual and performing arts in kindergarten through grade twelve.More information is available on the California Department of Education Website at:
http://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/fo/profile.asp?id=951
Project release of the allocation amounts April 13, 2007 according to the Department of Education website.
K-8 Physical Education Teacher Incentive Funding Applications
The California Department of Education has announced the release of the K-8 Physical Education Teacher Incentive Funding application. These applications and further information can be downloaded at http://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/fo/profile.asp?id=952
Funding supports ongoing incentive grants for school districts to hire more credentialed physical education teachers in elementary and middle schools, kindergarten through grade eight. The purpose of the program is to help address the rising incidence of obesity and its effects by ensuring that schools have trained experts to provide the required number of instructional minutes in physical education. The funds are to be used to hire credentialed staff to help kids develop healthy life-long exercise habits.
Friday, April 6, 2007
Welcome
Welcome to the Peaceful Playgrounds Blog. We will use this spot for discussions on Peaceful Playgrounds topics covered in the monthly Play Nice Newsletter. Check back often for new announcements. Brief descriptions of recently released research will also be shared on topics such as playgrounds, childhood obesity, physical activity and recess.
