Breaking News: Child's Play Is Healthy

I ran across a study today that simultaneously put me to sleep and made me say, "I thought we already knew that."

Physical environmental characteristics and individual interests as correlates of physical activity in Norwegian secondary schools: the Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children study

 Conclusion: The findings support the use of an ecological approach and multilevel analyses in the investigation of correlates of physical activity that allows for a broader understanding of the influence of and interaction between factors at multiple levels on physical activity behaviour. In the promotion of physical activity in lower secondary schools, the study suggests that programmes should include a focus on environmental facilitation and incorporate strategies to increase students' interests for school physical activity.

I think my parents could have told them that (and presumably have saved them some money on doing the study in the first place).  Except they just called it "playing outdoors" back then.  I was amazed at how complicated that concept can be made to sound.  When I was a kid, I remember my parents needing to drag me in from my "focus on environmental facilitation."  Hide and seek by streetlight was a good one.  The bushes in the neighbor's yard that turned into an inhospitable jungle to be used for mock battles seemed to fit the bill.  Hours on end in the lake at the cottage seemed right.  Target practice with my BB gun, dodgeball, tag and all the other classics were just part of life.

I'm not sure if it is just urban legend, but I've heard rumors that there are schools that have gone so far as to ban dodgeball.  It's not safe.  Instead we prefer to "focus on environmental facilitation and incorporate strategies to increase students' interests for school physical activity."  Wow.  Well, maybe I didn't read the conclusion properly.  They did seem to make it as difficult to interpret as possible.

Comments

[Damien]

Well the sad thing is that in many cases it seems, from my experience over here, that kids are losing this ability to play and organise games at an increasingly early age.

This whole idea of creative play and exploration just doesn't seem to be considered in the education of a child although I posit that were formalised education to be reduced to only a couple of hours a day, and exploratory play with children of different ages as well as adults increased in time the "intelligence" of children would sky-rocket.

I am teaching 6 year olds who are sitting down in class for about 6 hours a day!

Coupled that with only about 20-30 minutes at lunch-time, the hottest time of the day, when they are turned loose to play in a virtually barren concrete playground.... well it's no suprise that most of the kids spend that time sitting down outside of classrooms.

Not only that, some teachers force the students to do homework or other work during their breaks! 6-9 year old kids!!!

Insanity.

I ran a "club" which we have to do last lesson every Friday, initially I intended to do body-flow stuff but I got the gang of naughty kids who joined my club as I was the only teacher offering a physical outlet for the younger kids.... suffice it to say that the body-flow fell quickly out the window (these kids have an even shorter attention span than me!)

So instead I introduced them to some of the "tag" variations I used to play as a kid... they were absolutely thrilled and this gang of naughty kids approached me almost daily throughout the week stating how much they were looking forward to club-time.

All we did was play tag!

[Adam]

Damien,

It is awesome that you are stepping up and encouraging these kids to move! Maybe you can slowly create some Body-Flow tag variations... ;)

Cheers,
Adam

[Damien]

Well the bunch I got want to move anyway... it's actually difficult to stop them doing so in class time.

It's the other, less inclined to moving kids, that I want to reach.

They... however... are much more interested in "movie club" or "cooking club".

:(

Body-flow tag is an idea though, unfortunately our playground is pretty much concrete... would be a challenge to do most of the moves on a hard surface, for me anyways haha.

Still in negotiation with the management about opening an after school kids yoga class.