School children need more physical activity!

Every child needs plenty of physically activity both for healthy growth and maintenance of good physical and mental health. Unfortunately it is being seen that our children are getting less and less physically active. In addition to the overuse of TVs, computers, Nintendos, Playstations and X boxes as a major cause of reduced outdoor activities in children, there is also a significant dearth of physical education in school all over the country. Less then half even have a PE more then once of twice a week. But now concerned schools are coming up with new ways to keep children active.

Maanvi Singh writes on the subject on NPR Public Health page;

    To Get Kids Exercising, Schools Are Becoming Creative

Avery Stackhouse, age 7, of Lafayette, Calif., says he wishes he had more time for phys ed.

"We just have it one day a week — on Monday." There's always lunch and recess, he says. "We play a couple of games, like football and soccer," he tells Shots.

But at Happy Valley Elementary, where he goes to school, recess last only 15 minutes and lunch is 45. Between eating and mingling, he says, "there's only a few minutes left where we play games and all that."

Fifty-six percent of parents say their elementary school kids are getting just one or two days of physical education a week, according to a poll NPR conducted in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health.

Fewer than 1 in 5 parents with children in kindergarten through fifth grade said their kids were getting physical education daily.

Yet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that K-5 students get at least 150 minutes a week. Physical activity has a lot of benefits, from reducing obesity to helping kids do better academically.

Louisiana State University's Russ Carson, an exercise researcher, tells Shots the poll results don't surprise him. "This has been going on for years, unfortunately," he says. School administrators can only fit so many things into a day, and often, he says, "testing and other aspects of education take precedence over physical education."

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