First term report cards!

In the month of November students received their first report card reflecting their work effort, skill ability and behavior assessments by the P.E. staff. It is important and necessary that each parent sit down with their child to review not only the grade but also the teacher’s comments to better understand any issues that might have affected their grades. A specific grade should not be the sole criteria as to how your child is doing but rather, understanding the written comments and direction of the students grades from term to term. The student’s progress and growth are important considerations when trying to help each student reach their maximum potential. Are they making improvements in the areas that have been identified is our focus as an ongoing process.

This past month the children have been playing games outside as the weather has been so nice. We have played Treasure Island in which the children develop their running endurance and practice their dodging and avoidance skills and team play as their teams attempt to capture treasures while being protected by pirates, a fun cooperation and fitness game. We also have been working with the children to develop their coordination skills using hula hoops, jump ropes and ball dribbling skills. The activities are geared towards a developmental sequence of skill progression and development based on their individual successes. The children can learn at their own pace while learning an important value, that comes with effort and practice as they can learn new skills and to neverto give up trying. During this past week we have also played games with a Thanksgiving theme which the children just love as they act out their roles as "turkeys", Gobble Gobble!

Children are continuing to practice sportsmanship, respectful behavior and a sense of fair play within a game structure.

Best wishes for a wonderful Thanksgiving and hope that you can enjoy this special time for families to come together!

"The Way of Boys" by Dr. Anthony Rao, child psychologist

The need for physical education, within the public school setting, is often related to keeping children healthy as it relates to the problem of childhood obesity. But, as more is learned, books like this one reveal another important contribution by physical education in helping our children to mentally cope with the rigors of lengthier classes and increased academic demands.

This book looks like a must read for all of us who have noticed an increase in ADHD diagnosis.

Quote:
"Rao's troubled by a 4,000 percent increase in ADHD diagnoses over the past 10 years. He also cites a 600 percent increase in prescribing antipsychotic drugs to children, mostly boys, he said.
What's happening? Rao thinks it boils down to school. Kids, he said, are asked to sit longer, indoors, in language intensive environments.

For boys, that can be a recipe for frustration.
“And when they’re frustrated they begin to act out. We label it a disorder,” Rao said. “But the newest area of exciting research is, when putting kids – and this is mostly boys – outdoors for longer periods of time, giving them vigorous exercise, a lot of the symptoms of ADHD seem to go away."

Just being aware that this is a possibility is an important consideration to understanding our children and the "nature of boys" before being so quick to "label" our children as ADHD.

October P.E. Update

The weather is changing and the children are becoming more comfortable in the P.E. Classes. We continue to work on class behavior, peer respect during games and good sportsmanship, as these skills don't always come easily and most often, must be learned during real activity experiences.
This month has focused on finishing our soccer unit and playing games using their imagination and creativity, but all within a game format with rules. The children love to use their imagination and become aliens, blobs, patriots and ghouls!
Our Fall extravaganza includes 12 stations, each station sure to excite the young at heart (and allot of fun for us to create!). The children enjoy a few minutes at each station performing the task at hand and pretend, as an example, that a station might be a rope ride or perhaps a witches broom ride or a rocket ship ride, but regardless, the end result is a broad happy smile across their face! The stations are never long enough!
Make sure to ask your child about the P.E. stations and look forward to our November themes, so stay tuned to find out just where we go from here!
This is such a fun time of year to be outdoors and moving about, so bundle up and enjoy your child , get your mind off of all of the daily stressors and enjoy every minute of this special time in thier lives!

Let Them Be Little......

This YouTube video has a special message and hope that with all of the daily stressors in life and pressures that we all learn to take time to enjoy our children now!
Hope you enjoy.

September P.E. Update!

A new school year has begun and the children have high expectation to learn and have fun in our Physical Education classes.

Through September we have focused on sharing their excitement, while integrating P.E. class rules for behavior, sportsmanship, class attitude, and how we can promote mutual respect for one another.

The activities presented to the children have focused on: cooperative games and working together; getting to know classmates; beginning soccer skills such as dribbling, trapping, controlling the dribble; and various tag games, as well as Bandit and Uninterrupted games.

These initial days are critical in having the children learn class rules and playing together in a respectful way. This foundation will serve as an important guideline in helping your child get the most time on learning and participation.

Do You Believe in me?

This You Tube video is inspirational and the message is clear and worth listening to as parents and professionals and for that matter.....anyone who values the concept that we all have something special to offer to the world!

We believe in your children and the Physical Education Program always stresses that the children Do Their Best!!!!! Because we know that with time, that each child will find their own measure of success in which they can feel proud of accomplishing some task. We hope that with our guidance and support that they truly do learn to ....Believe in themselves!

Enjoy!

Obesity discussion! From Kids Source (see link)

The Problem of Obesity
Not all obese infants become obese children, and not all obese children become obese adults. However, the prevalence of obesity increases with age among both males and females (Lohman, 1987), and there is a greater likelihood that obesity beginning even in early childhood will persist through the life span (Epstein, Wing, Koeske, & Valoski, 1987).

Obesity presents numerous problems for the child. In addition to increasing the risk of obesity in adulthood, childhood obesity is the leading cause of pediatric hypertension, is associated with Type II diabetes mellitus, increases the risk of coronary heart disease, increases stress on the weight-bearing joints, lowers self-esteem, and affects relationships with peers. Some authorities feel that social and psychological problems are the most significant consequences of obesity in children.

Causes of Childhood Obesity
As with adult-onset obesity, childhood obesity has multiple causes centering around an imbalance between energy in (calories obtained from food) and energy out (calories expended in the basal metabolic rate and physical activity). Childhood obesity most likely results from an interaction of nutritional, psychological, familial, and physiological factors.

The Family
The risk of becoming obese is greatest among children who have two obese parents (Dietz, 1983). This may be due to powerful genetic factors or to parental modeling of both eating and exercise behaviors, indirectly affecting the child's energy balance. One half of parents of elementary school children never exercise vigorously (Ross & Pate, 1987).

Low-energy Expenditure
The average American child spends several hours each day watching television; time which in previous years might have been devoted to physical pursuits. Obesity is greater among children and adolescents who frequently watch television (Dietz & Gortmaker, 1985), not only because little energy is expended while viewing but also because of concurrent consumption of high-calorie snacks. Only about one-third of elementary children have daily physical education, and fewer than one-fifth have extracurricular physical activity programs at their schools (Ross & Pate, 1987).

Heredity
Since not all children who eat non-nutritious foods, watch several hours of television daily, and are relatively inactive develop obesity, the search continues for alternative causes. Heredity has recently been shown to influence fatness, regional fat distribution, and response to overfeeding (Bouchard et al., 1990). In addition, infants born to overweight mothers have been found to be less active and to gain more weight by age three months when compared with infants of normal weight mothers, suggesting a possible inborn drive to conserve energy (Roberts, Savage, Coward, Chew, & Lucas, 1988).

Treatment of Childhood Obesity

Obesity treatment programs for children and adolescents rarely have weight loss as a goal. Rather, the aim is to slow or halt weight gain so the child will grow into his or her body weight over a period of months to years. Dietz (1983) estimates that for every 20 percent excess of ideal body weight, the child will need one and one-half years of weight maintenance to attain ideal body weight.
Early and appropriate intervention is particularly valuable. There is considerable evidence that childhood eating and exercise habits are more easily modified than adult habits (Wolf, Cohen, Rosenfeld, 1985). Three forms of intervention include:

Physical Activity
Adopting a formal exercise program, or simply becoming more active, is valuable to burn fat, increase energy expenditure, and maintain lost weight. Most studies of children have not shown exercise to be a successful strategy for weight loss unless coupled with another intervention, such as nutrition education or behavior modification (Wolf et al., 1985). However, exercise has additional health benefits. Even when children's body weight and fatness did not change following 50 minutes of aerobic exercise three times per week, blood lipid profiles and blood pressure did improve (Becque, Katch, Rocchini, Marks, & Moorehead, 1988).

Diet Management
Fasting or extreme caloric restriction is not advisable for children. Not only is this approach psychologically stressful, but it may adversely affect growth and the child's perception of "normal" eating. Balanced diets with moderate caloric restriction, especially reduced dietary fat, have been used successfully in treating obesity (Dietz, 1983). Nutrition education may be necessary. Diet management coupled with exercise is an effective treatment for childhood obesity (Wolf et al., 1985).

Behavior Modification
Many behavioral strategies used with adults have been successfully applied to children and adolescents: self-monitoring and recording food intake and physical activity, slowing the rate of eating, limiting the time and place of eating, and using rewards and incentives for desirable behaviors. Particularly effective are behaviorally based treatments that include parents (Epstein et al., 1987). Graves, Meyers, and Clark (1988) used problem-solving exercises in a parent-child behavioral program and found children in the problem-solving group, but not those in the behavioral treatment-only group, significantly reduced percent overweight and maintained reduced weight for six months. Problem-solving training involved identifying possible weight-control problems and, as a group, discussing solutions.