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Recreation to join 3Rs of learning to make children more fit
The Ottawa Citizen (Wed 04 May 2005 Byline: Hayley Mick and Jamie Sutherland) reports on a new project taking aim at childhood obesity that brings physical exercise into the space where children are most often found: the classroom. The four-month pilot project, which will incorporate 30 minutes of daily physical activity into regular lessons, will begin next fall and involve one French- and one English-speaking Grade 3 class from Ottawa. A lesson might look something like this: Students asked to add two plus two would answer by squatting four times. A class might go on a science expedition by walking around the school to identify different tree species. Dr. Claire LeBlanc is a pediatric rheumatologist at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, who helped design the study. The project is the latest initiative to address soaring levels of childhood obesity in Canada. Solving the problem will be the focus of a two-day conference and trade show starting in Ottawa tomorrow. Health and education specialists will gather at Algonquin College to discuss how policy-makers, health care workers, educators, parents and others can work to reduce obesity and poor fitness in children. This learn-while-you-exercise project is funded by a $50,000 grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. If it produces positive results, the project may be implemented at schools across Canada. To design it, Dr. Leblanc teamed up with childhood obesity expert Mark Tremblay, dean of kinesiology at the University of Saskatchewan and a scientific adviser to Statistics Canada.
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