October 2010 is Physical Therapy Month. The APTA is promoting physical therapists to encourage families to combat obesity with physical activity this month. They have produced a hand out entitled “Smart Moves for Families”. It can be viewed below or downloaded from the APTA website. Print it out and send home with children at your […]
Here is an informative video from Edutopia found over at the Peaceful Playgrounds blog. Four exercises are demonstrated to help refocus a student or raise a student’s level of alertness. Great activities to get student’s ready to learn! Mini Movement Breaks: Download of 60+ quicksensory motor activity cards forschool, home or therapy clinic. Only $3.99
Are you involved in your school’s parent teacher association (PTA)? The National PTA is offering grants for up to $1000 to increase physical activity and awareness of healthy foods to families. The grant application must be submitted by a PTA in good standing by September 10, 2010. There are some criteria for eligibility such as […]
Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise published research on the benefits of children walking to school. Twenty girls and twenty boys, ages 10-14 years old, were randomly assigned to two groups – simulated walking to school or simulated driving to school. The walking group walked 1.6 km while on treadmill viewing neighborhood pictures and […]
Pediatrics will be publishing a study on the effects of television and video gaming on attention problems. One thousand three hundred twenty three children (6-12 years old) were followed for 13 months. Television and video gaming use were recorded. The average screen time use (TV and video games) was 4.26 hours. Teachers reported on attention […]
Dr. Robert Gerszten of Massachusetts General Hospital and his team of researchers compared biochemical changes in the blood in healthy middle age adults, adults with shortness of breath and marathon runners. In the healthy subjects, the researchers found that after only 10 minutes of exercise, there was chemical changes in the blood for one hour […]
A recent study published in BMC Public Health reported on parental television viewing habits and children’s TV habits along with physical activity. The research indicated that children of parents who watch many hours of television daily are more likely to watch more hours of television per day as well. For boys the risk of watching […]
The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine published research on television watching at 2 and 4 years of age and its effects when the children are 10 years of age. Parents reported how much television was watched during the early years. Parents and teachers also reported on academic, psychosocial, and health behaviors and body mass […]
Two recent studies report that disadvantaged preschoolers exhibit gross motor delays on the Test of Gross Motor Development – 2. Goodway et. al. reported in the Research Quarterly for Exercise and Science that 86% of Midwestern and southwestern preschoolers were delayed in locomotor and object control skills (Woodward and Yun report in Early Child Development […]
There is an interesting free app for the iPhone entitled Walk n’ Play. Developed by Chinmay Manohar in the Department Endocrinology, Nutrition and Diabetes of the Mayo Clinic, Walk n’ Play tracks normal day to day physical activity. Once you put in the height and weight of the user, it tracks your movements and tells […]