Your Therapy Source Blog

A recent study in Brain Research studied forty-nine, 9 and 10 year old children. MRI measurements were taken comparing the brains of fit and unfit children. The results indicated increased volume of the hippocampus by 12% in the fit children. In addition, the fit children performed better on relational memory (the ability to remember and integrate various types of information).

Reference:
Yates, Diana. Child’s Brain Development is Linked to Physical Fitness. Retrieved from the web on 10/5/2010 at http://news.illinois.edu/news/10/0915_brain_development_and_fitness_art_kramer.html

If you have any trouble viewing magazine go to www.YourTherapySource.com/magazine to download the issue.

Do you have to present to a group this year? Would you like some photographs for your classroom, therapy room or home with some meaningful quotes? The National Dissemnenation Center for Children with Disabilities has 50 Powerpoint slides that you can download to use for professional development or your own use. Some of the quotes and pictures are really great and moving. You can download the .zip file and then open the Powerpoint document entitled Quotes 1-25 at http://www.nichcy.org/Laws/IDEA/Documents/Training_Curriculum/Quotes1-25.zip and for Quotes 26-50 at http://www.nichcy.org/Laws/IDEA/Documents/Training_Curriculum/Quotes26-50.zip

If you are interested in how exercise effects learning in the classroom this documentary is a must see video. It is about 15 minutes long. It covers a special education classroom in Canada that use treadmills followed by academic sessions. The teacher reports excellent results. Here is the link – http://www.cbc.ca/national/blog/special_feature/brain_gains/brain_gains_2.html

Child Development reports on a study indicating that preschoolers spent most of their time performing sedentary activities (89%). They spent 8% of the day performing light physical activity and only 3% of the day doing moderately vigorous physical activity.

This is some scary information. If we are worried about obesity now, it may only get worse. In addition, I would think the number of children referred for occupational and physical therapy services will increase. If preschoolers are sitting all day long, children will not learn the necessary gross motor skills. Muscle strengthening throughout may also be affected resulting in “low tone” trunks and decreased fine motor skills. Raising couch potato preschoolers in not a good idea! As therapists in the preschools we need to educate teachers and staff on the importance of physical activity throughout the day.

Reference: AU: William H. Brown, Karin A. Pfeiffer, Kerry L. McIver, Marsha Dowda, Cheryl L. Addy, Russell R. Pate Social and Environmental Factors Associated With Preschoolers’ Nonsedentary Physical Activity Child Development
80: 1 (45-58) 2009.