Archive for the ‘Childhood Exercise’ Category

Children in Crisis; 2/3rds Failing Fitness Tests!

What do you mean exercise? Where's the Food!

Two years ago Texas became the first state to mandate annual fitness testing. More than two-thirds of Texas school children flunked the state’s physical fitness test this year. A state analysis last year found that schools with better fitness results also had higher academic performance and fewer discipline problems.

Think about this! This is appalling! What is our nation doing to its children? When I was in school we had 1 hour of physical education every day, which we called “phys ed”. We, the girls, did not like it because it messed up our hair, we got sweaty, had to shower (which messed up our hair, again) and always wished for it to occur 6th period, the last period of the day. It was REQUIRED. It was not an elective. I had to take it from grade three through grade 12. My hair was always a mess by fourth period because I always seemed to have “phys ed” during one of the first 3 periods of the day.

I have already stated the case in a previous post about computers, TV, video games, cell phones, etc., and their dramatic impact on children and their physical experience with the outdoors, nature, and play. But, please forgive me; every time I read something like this I become angry at the lack of common sense and compassion regarding our nation’s children and their health. I read nearly every day about the amazing government waste of our monetary resources that go to politicians, their donors, defense contractors with their cost overruns, teacher unions who spend thousands on lobbying politicians for political favors, etc.

None of these people care about our children. They care about their bank accounts and power. It is all about Power and Money! (You see it really does raise the hackles within me!) By the way, many politicians, teachers, contractors, and those in government or corporate power send their children to private schools where they have the best education with the best physical plant facilities, and lots of private lessons, whose teachers are not tenured. The rest of the population send their children to dilapidated, deteriorating, school buildings, with cafeterias stocking coke and snack machines for money, using tattered books and sub standard classrooms, staffed with teachers protected by tenure even when they molest children.

I thought our high property taxes paid for the public school system? Who wants to bet that your taxes are used in other places and not your schools? Maybe some of your money funds the nearly bankrupted retirement accounts of public government employees? Even President Obama will not send his daughters to the public school system of Washington, DC, the nation’s capital! He wants them to get a good education so they can go to the top flight universities in our country. You know what, I wouldn’t send my sons to those schools either.

If any of these people of power really cared they would be pouring our resources (your property tax money) and their focus into our children and their future, who are the future of the United States of America. We have become a nation of greed and disregard. Our children are the victims. Just look around you in your malls, grocery stores, churches, and neighborhoods. The world is passing us by and we are sacrificing what many other countries will not sacrifice, the children.

Now read what it takes to pass a physical fitness test in Texas if your child is 12 years of age:

To be considered physically fit a 12-year-old boy is expected to:

• Complete one-mile run in no more than 10 minutes, 30 seconds
• Have a body fat percentage of 25 or less
• Perform 18 curl-ups (tests abdominal strength)
• Perform nine trunk lifts (tests trunk strength)
• Perform 10 push-ups (tests upper-body strength)
• Sit with one knee bent and one leg straightened against a box, then reach fingers within 8   inches of the box (tests flexibility)

A 12-year-old girl must:

• Complete a 1-mile run in no more than 12 minutes
• Have a body fat percentage of 32 or less
• Perform 18 curl-ups
• Perform nine trunk lifts
• Perform seven push-ups
• Sit with one knee bent and one leg straightened against a box, then reach fingers within 10 inches of the box

Can you imagine what children will look like in the next 5 years if we do not place an emphasis on nutrition in our school cafeterias, physical fitness in our school programs, and outdoor programs that take children back to nature and the woods? No skin off my nose. My sons were raised in the woods, ate from our garden, and are strong, healthy, educated, and successful. I appeal to the parents of the millions of small ones, who need their parents to speak for them, to rise up, and demand what is rightfully theirs. You do pay the property tax money which goes to all the governments, local, state and federal. Why are we quiet as they take our treasure and split it up amongst themselves? Why is there no public outcry in defense of our small children?

I cannot be the only one who thinks about this?

Children in Crisis; Preschools in the Forests

May 24, 2010 1 comment

Our Children’s School began in a garage, grew into 2 garages, then an art room, then an outside garden plot, then a small kitchen for cooking, and then into the woods surrounding our home. Our sons decided daily, weekly, monthly  what it was that interested them and this determined their curriculum. They dissected worms, a cow’s heart they got “FREE” from the local slaughter house, and frogs. They looked at the stars and studied the universe and its constellations. This brought them to Greek mythology and the Gods. Soon they delved into space travel and astronauts and then went on to Space Camp in Alabama. Dinosaurs were big and so they studied the Jurassic period and took a field trip to Utah’s Dinosaur Valley. They built a tree house on a hill with a tree in the middle of the floor that they insisted could not be cut down – after all, “that is why we call it a tree house Mooooom!”

All of their preschool education incorporated the outdoors and the natural world. I can’t imagine how it is possible to educate preschool children without the outdoors for that is what intrigues them most. They love insects, small animals, rainy days with puddles to jump into, snowmen and snowball fights, butterflies, and the woods. The natural world and the woods are a home to them. They are free to run, explore, conquer, and grow.

It is with great satisfaction that I read an article this morning about a “forest kindergarten” in Vashon Island, WA. The Cedarsong Nature School is a forest preschool and among several that have opened in recent years in the U.S. This is a movement that originated in Europe (and my garages 30 years ago, chuckling). The purpose is to get kids out from in front of televisions and into the natural world. The kids love it! They are outdoors all day, studying how life interacts with them in the woods. These children are different when they enter elementary school. They are healthier, livelier, curious, more mature, compassionate, and intellectually alive. They have an inner joy that is hard to explain, which I believe comes from their knowledge of the natural world and their comfort within it. They are fearless.

Erin Kenny opened the Cedarsong Nature School, after she read “The Last Child in the Woods”, which I discussed in my previous post. In the book, Richard Louv coined the phrase “nature-deficit disorder” to explain a lack of connection between the country’s children and nature. He argues that the decrease in nature dwelling leads to a rise in childhood obesity, attention disorders, and depression. The evidence of this surrounds us. Go to the local mall on any afternoon after school and look at the children, who are usually obese, tattooed, “pants on the ground”, alienated, and looking for something to do inside an enclosed mall when the entire world is waiting for them to explore. They are an interesting comment on their parents and their rote education.

“We gain life by looking at life.”

Dr. Mardie Townsend, a researcher and associate professor  School of Health and Social Development at Deakin University in Victoria, Australia

In the woods on a Balancing Bar

Families in Crisis; The Last Child in the Woods

“What is the extinction of a condor

to a child who has never seen a wren?”

Naturalist Robert Michael Pyle


“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth


Rachel Carson




”Teaching children about the natural world should be treated

as one of the most important events in their lives.”

Thomas Berry

Families in Crisis; Food for Thought

April 21, 2010 2 comments












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