Heading outdoors with your family and friends is a great opportunity for your children to have fun, be active, use their imagination and experience all the joys of the outdoors. Now that spring has arrived, we don’t have any excuse to remain indoors.
As numerous studies have found, play is an important for healthy child development. Through play, your children learn to interact with others, develop language skills, recognize and solve problems, and discover their human potential.
However, with the loss of school recess and safe areas for play, increased time in front of the television and computer screens and an over-abundance of adult-organized activities, today’s children spend less time playing outdoors than ever before. More than 60% of children between the ages of 9 and 13 do not participate in any organized physical activity outside of school. Nearly one-fourth get no free-time physical activity at all.
The 2005 Dietary Guidelines recommend that children and teenagers get 60 minutes of moderately intense activity on most days to help control weight, build muscular strength, achieve aerobic fitness, increase bone mass through weight-bearing activities, reduce stress, and build self-esteem. That may sound like a lot, but this hour of moderate-level activity does not have to be completed at one time. For example, your child might walk the dog for 15 minutes, play soccer for 30 minutes, and run and jump on the playground for 15 minutes. Broken down this way, it seems easy and natural.
A study in Pediatrics reported the average child spends 900 hours in school and nearly 1,023 hours in front of a TV in a given year. During the 1960s, television offered 27 hours of children’s programming a week, mostly shown on Saturday morning. Today, there are 14 television networks aimed at children. Surveys by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cite a child is six times more likely to play a video game than ride a bike on a typical day.
Outdoor play builds active, healthy bodies; and increasing physical activity levels in children is one important strategy to reduce the incidence of childhood obesity. When your children make their way across monkey bars, hop the hopscotch course, play jacks or toss a football, these activities require planning, balance and strength.
Wednesday, April 23 is Move it Outside Day, a day promoting outdoor play as a way for your children to have fun and stay fit. This newly created event is celebrated by Pennsylvania Advocates for Nutrition and Activity (PANA), a statewide network working collectively to make it easier to be healthy in the places we live, learn, work and play by changing environments to support healthy eating and physical activity option. By promoting outdoor play at school, after school and at home, we can help children build active, healthy bodies; and increase physical activity levels.
It is no coincidence that Move it Outside is celebrated during National Turn off the TV Week. If you can’t imagine a week without TV, then start with one day. Gather your family together, open the door and head outside. Take your dog for a walk. Go for a bike ride with your family. Take a hike on Rails to Trails or a local park. Go outdoors and search for signs of spring: green buds, frog eggs, four-leaf clovers, etc. Offer to help a neighbor by raking leaves. You get the idea, turn off the TV and computer screens, and enjoy your great outdoors!
In Clearfield County, the local Keystone Active Zone (KAZ) committee is compiling a listing of exciting and creative activities for you to do with your children while exploring the parks and trails in the county. Visit the KAZ Web site to find out what parks and trails are close to your home and what you can do there.
Additional information is available from Andrea Bressler at awb1@psu.edu or here; and your local office of Penn State Cooperative Extension. In Clearfield, the office is located in the Multi-Service Center, or by calling 765-7878. In Brookville, the office is located at 180 Main Street, or by calling 849-7361. And in Ridgway, the office is located in the Courthouse, or by calling 776-5331. Penn State is committed to affirmative action, equal opportunity, and the diversity of its workforce.