• Dec 18, 2020

Week 8

You Did It! 

THANK YOU for participating in Stay Active. This is the final week of our program so this will be the final week you will receive a newsletter and text messages from us. We hope you enjoyed your time and hope you continue to use what you learned to Stay Active in 2021!


Social support and being active as a family Who is your support network? This program has focused on family support, but it is equally important to have support from outside your family as well. Here are some examples of people you might look to for support:

Family Non-Family - Parents - Teachers/counselors - Grandparents - Friends/coworkers - Siblings - Members from groups (like the gym, faith - Children community, community organizations, etc.)

All people within your support network can help you achieve your physical activity goals! Think back to your goals from last week. What challenges did you face? Is there something someone could have done or said to help you reach your goal? Who can you ask for help with achieving a goal next time?

Being physically active promotes health in EVERYONE. We recommend being active with friends or family members to help you and them stay healthy. Plus, there are some extra benefits when you exercise with your family.

· Exercising as a family is one way you can be exercise buddies for each other. It is very important for children not to feel isolated or different from everyone else. So, this is a great time to get everyone in the family exercising.

· Children learn from example, and most will follow in their parents’ footsteps. You have a very important role in helping your child become active and stay active for life. Be active yourself and display a positive attitude which shows them that being active is fun!

Other benefits to exercising with your friends or family:

· It strengthens bonds and relationships between friends/family.

· It allows you to spend quality time with each other, which is very important in this busy world!

· When people have a shared interest/activity, it gives them something to chat about and provides something the whole family or friend group can do together.

· Family members or friends can help keep each other motivated.

· Many group exercises/sports your child learns in school are competitive in nature. Family exercise provides fun, non-competitive exercise, which all kids can enjoy!”

Family Activity Corner 

Take some time with your child to reflect on strategies or exercises that helped your family become physically active. What things worked really well? What things did not work so well? What were your child’s favorite exercise activities? Make a list of these things. For future planning, try using what worked well to help you all stay active.

For this week, each person in the family picks their favorite exercise, and everyone tries the exercise together!

Brain Break:

· Try video chatting a friend, and complete one of your physical activity challenges that you learned over the past couple weeks with your friend!

· Check out this video: Go to YouTube and search At home P.E. activities for kids or use this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGWKdT60IHc

COVID-19 Updates 

Visit the Stay Active Website for more information and resources

Contact us with any questions or concerns related to the Stay Active Program:


activekids@cmh.edu


816-287-0262 

    • Dec 11, 2020

Week 7

Problem solving

In the course of everyday life, you’re going to experience lots of decisions or situations that make being active more difficult. You’ll need good problem-solving skills to find solutions to these situations. Everyone uses problem solving skills every day without even realizing it. People deal with all types of problems, both big and small. When you have problems come up, we want to teach you a strategy to help to solve these problems. We use the acronym SOCS to remember this strategy, which stands for

Situation

Options

Consequences

Solution

The goal of this technique is to help you reflect on a problem or situation, determine alternative options and strategies, recognize consequences, and choose an appropriate course of action.

Let’s go through an example of this:

Situation: Let’s say the Situation is someone in the family has been skipping their physical

activity.

Options: Possible Options to stop this situation from happening may include:

· Go for an after dinner walk as a family,

· Try several new physical activities to see which ones are most enjoyable,

· Turn off screens

Consequences: What are some Consequences from the Options we discussed?

· If the family goes for an after dinner walk and the person has a good time, they may be likely to do it again.

· If they try several new physical activities, they may find something else enjoyable the family can do together.

· If screens are turned off, they may find that they have more time in their day to be active!

Solution: which of the potential Options do you think would be best for your family?

What is a problem your family is currently experiencing? How can you apply SOCS to this? We have a work sheet to help walk you through each of the steps.

Tempting situations - Strategies to engage in physical activity the holidays

What situations are tempting for you? Maybe a stressful workday, going on vacation, or days off during the holiday season? We want to provide you with problem solving skills that can help you stay active, but we also want to discuss how to handle it when you do slip up. Slipping up is a normal part of the process, and we don’t want you to give up!

Prevention strategies:

· Plan ahead. Be aware before you enter into a situation that’s going to be temping and think about how you will handle it. Just thinking about it beforehand can help you make better choices when you’re there! It also helps you plan ahead. How have you planned ahead to avoid temptation?

· Make a plan. During the holidays, you may not get to have your normal exercise routine, but you can still choose activities that are more active than others! Or plan out time to exercise with a friend or family member to help keep you accountable!

· Recovering from slip-ups: Everyone misses their goals at some point. If you miss a few days or a week of being active, the first step is to realize it and we encourage you to get back into the habit of being active. Make sure to set specific, measurable, and a realistic goal for the first week back, and keep yourself accountable to that goal through motivating techniques or incentives.

Family Activity Corner 

Complete the problem-solving worksheet with your child to identify barriers to exercise and how to overcome these barriers.

Everyone in the home can try a physical activity jeopardy game. Write 5, 10, 15, 20, etc. on separate pieces of paper. On the back of each of these sheets write a physical activity. Examples include boxing jabs, jumping jacks, push-ups, arm circles, elbow to opposite knee touches. Pick of the pieces of paper and everyone does the physical activity listed for the number of repetitions listed on the piece of paper.

**this activity was modified from the American Heart Association’s In-School Activities Break list

https://www.heart.org/idc/groups/heartpublic/@wcm/@fc/documents/downloadable/ucm_455767.pdf

Brain Breaks:

· Try this exercise activity. Go to YouTube and search HTS Middle School & High School PE Cardio & Core or use this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3H2lQ3_Z_M

· Check out this plank activity! Go to YouTube and search PE from Home – Playing Card Plank Activity or go to this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1WXer02t_o.

COVID-19 Updates 

Visit the Stay Active Website for more information and resources

Contact us with any questions or concerns related to the Stay Active Program:


activekids@cmh.edu


816-287-0262 

    • Dec 4, 2020

Week 6

Screen time recommendations and health risks

So far, we have mainly focused on promoting physical activity, but we haven’t addressed the other end of the spectrum: “sedentary” activities. Sedentary activities include activities like watching TV, using the computer, or playing with other electronics (videos games or phones). These activities involve sitting or lying down without any extra physical effort. Too much sedentary time can lead to poor health, so it’s important to minimize sedentary time. One way to do that is to reduce the time we spend in front of screens—TV and digital media (video games, computers, smartphones, tablets, etc.). For this reason, this newsletter will primarily focus on reducing “screen time.” But you can also improve your health by applying these tips to any activity where you to sit for long periods of time (more than 2 hours) without getting up.

Screen time recommendation: health experts recommend that children have no more than 2 hours of screen time a day. This is a separate recommendation from the physical activity recommendation of getting at least 60 minutes each day.

What is screen time? For the purposes of this program, we mean the time spent watching television or digital media, such as playing video games, or being on computer, smartphone, or tablet. We also don’t mean time that is involved in homework – we can’t control this and homework is important for school so it doesn’t count in the 2 hours that we’re talking about here.

Why the recommendation?

· When people are in front of a screen, they are usually not being physically active.

· The more time in front of a screen, the fewer calories they are burning through activity.

· People often eat more when they are in front of a screen, which can compound the issue — not only is there very little calorie burn, but there is an increase in calorie intake from the food.

· Being in front of a screen can cause people to eat too much because they may be too distracted to tell they are full or eat when they are not hungry out of habit. On top of these issues, people often eat unhealthy foods while watching TV.

· People are exposed to food commercials when they watch TV or digital media, which can encourage them to eat. Many of the foods advertised are not healthy. Every year, the food industry spends 4.6 BILLION dollars on advertising to children, with each American child viewing about 15 food advertisements per day (mostly for unhealthy foods).

Researchers are learning more and more about the harm associated with being sedentary – and this is independent of time spent in physical activity. So, even if you get your 60 minutes of physical activity, you also need to reduce your sitting/screen time. Keep this in mind when setting your goals and working on your health behaviors.


Ways to reduce screen time

Just like what we did with physical activity, the first way to reduce screen time is to TRACK how much screen time you actually get each day. The average child in the US gets 7 hours of screen time every day, and adults get 10 hours!

We have two handouts for you this week. One is ‘Ideas to reduce children’s screen time.’ This can help show when some screen time may be occurring without you realizing and help you come up with ways to turn off screens. The second is a ‘Screen time log’ worksheet. This is very similar to the physical activity tracker, but shows which screens are being used and for how long.

With this new information, you may choose to create two types of goals this week related to 1) increasing your physical activity 2) reducing your screen time.

Family Activity Corner 

Set an alarm when your child is watching TV, playing videos, or spending time in front of a screen. Set the alarm between 15-30 minutes. Every time the alarm goes off, have your child take a break from sedentary time. Use this time as an opportunity to get more exercise or completing an active task around the house.

Think about other creative ways to reduce screen time. Strategies like removing access to screens 1 hour before bedtime can help reduce screen time and help your child’s body prepare for sleep.

Everyone in the home can also try these stretches (maybe even when watching TV). Check out this website: https://www.jenreviews.com/yoga-for-kids.

Brain Breaks

· Try this yoga activity! Go to YouTube and search Yoga For The Classroom – Yoga with Adriene or you can click this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td6zFtZPkJ4.

· Pick five of your favorite stretches that you learned this week and try them after you finish an assignment!

· Try this calming exercise. Go to YouTube and search Bring It Down – Flow GoNoodle or click on this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRkILioT_NA.

COVID-19 Updates 

Visit the Stay Active Website for more information and resources

Contact us with any questions or concerns related to the Stay Active Program:


activekids@cmh.edu


816-287-0262