Here is a fun activity idea to play with children – Design A Game. Just gather up some various objects and let the child create a brand new game to play. You can view and/or print this helpful sample to get your creative juices flowing at Your Therapy Source. If a child from the age […]
There is so much discussion and promotion of getting children physically active and outdoors especially in the adolescent age range. A recent study evaluated data on the self reports of mode of transportation to school and extracurricular physical activity in 1700 adolescents (892 girls) ages 13-18.5 years old from Spain. The results indicated that girls […]
NAEYC.org has published a great hand out on increasing physical activity for preschoolers. It includes 12 simple tips on how to encourage preschoolers to move. For example: hang pictures on the wall of children moving, use regular objects in the classroom for movement play, teach children how to use different objects for multiple uses and […]
Download this free brief entitled Learning to Move and Moving to Learn to distribute to teachers and parents. It is packed with tips and information on why movement is important and how to foster motor play in the curriculum. You can download it here or below. While you are at it, check out these videos […]
Health Psychology published research on a study of 171 overweight 7 to 11 year olds who participated in increased physical activity. The following results were seen in the children who participated in the vigorous exercise group : Increased brain activity in prefrontal cortex seen on MRI IQ scores increased by 3.8 points with 40 minutes […]
A new study that will be published in Medicine & Science in Sports and Exercise found that 10 and 11 year old boys and girls who are physically active with their best friends engage in higher amounts of physical activity. Higher levels of physical activity were seen when the friends were active outside of school […]
A recent study done in Spain found that adolescent girls who walked or biked to school had better cognitive performance. Although, it was not found to be true for boys. Even when socioeconomics, age, body weight and activities outside of school were factored in, the difference in cognitive performance in girls was still observed. In […]
Let’s face it growing up today is not the same as it used to be. The children in the United States are becoming less and less active. Many children today ride the bus to school, ride the bus home and play indoors (mostly television, video game and computer use). The extracurricular physical activities in a […]
Here is yet another reason to get children to turn off the tv, computer and video games and get moving. Pediatrics published a large research study following 1013 children (average age 10.95 years old). Daily television hours and computer use were logged. Sedentary time and moderate/ vigorous physical activity were tracked with accelerometers. The results […]
If you are working with children to increase their activity levels or to reduce obesity, take the time to check out My Fitness Pal. This is a free, fun tool that calculates how many calories you burn doing many different tasks. You pick the activity, put in your weight and for how long you did […]