Author: Merrill Funk

Healthy Choices to Starting the School Day

Student lives are packed with school, homework, entertainment, social media and much more. This leaves little time for healthy eating and exercising. Understanding how to fit healthy meals and exercise into busy school days affects the ability of our students to meet the high demands of a busy life while simultaneously maintaining short and long-term health. Physical activity, good nutrition, and a healthy mind set, build the foundation for a well-rounded childhood. Questions about whether or not to eat breakfast, what to eat for breakfast, when to exercise, and how many hours of sleep are needed, are often confusing topics with many differing opinions. In this article, we address some common topics relating to how to start the day based on research-proven strategies for dealing with the fast-paced environment in which today’s students live.

Habits
Habits are regular tendencies and practices followed with little conscious effort. Habits are born out of long-term consistent routines. The more consistent students are with sleeping, eating right, and exercising, the greater likelihood they will become habits. Although changing our daily lifestyles can be difficult, one effective strategy is to set the goal of practicing 3-4 new behaviors for 30 days. These new goals should be written down and read daily. After 30 days students often discover that the new behaviors are taking less effort and starting to become second nature “habits.” But remember, it’s important to ensure routines (e.g. to eat breakfast everyday) are also consistently healthy (i.e. include meals that are well-balanced). Because lifelong habits can good or bad for your well-being, it’s vital our students’ choices are good!

Have Plenty of Choices
School-age children often don’t like doing the same thing over and over again. Routines that don’t include variety can become boring. But including variety doesn’t have to take away from the goal of developing consistent habits, but rather emphasizes the importance of providing choices within behaviors. Students need to have plenty of healthy choices for food and different options for staying physically active. Mixing it up is fun, refreshing, and something to look forward to doing rather than disliking.

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Skill and Fitness Assessment Ideas for Students with Disabilities

Assessing the skills and physical fitness of students with disabilities can be challenging. Most physical educators are used to assessing general non-disabled students, but many don’t have the know-how and experience of testing and planning activities for students with disabilities (especially students with severe/multiple disability). Assessment is vital for skill and fitness prescription and for students with disabilities individualized assessment is critical. The following information gives physical educators who teach students with disabilities many practical suggestions for appropriate motor skills testing and fitness programming .

General Guidelines for Successful Skill and Fitness Testing

Motivation can be a problem for many students with disabilities because they lack the intrinsic understanding and concept of giving “100%” effort. Physical educators may need to find extra motivating factors for students to perform at their potential. For example, in the long jump teachers could have students with disabilities reach out and jump to a buddy, jump out for a favorite toy, or jump over a colored rope. Students could also reach for a ball or toy during sit-ups and Sit & Reach tests or listen to their favorite music on a treadmill test for motivation. Motorized treadmills are excellent for cardiovascular endurance training and testing because they provide a “steady pace.”

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Physical Activity Strategies for Busy Teachers

With another year just around the corner, it’s time once again to think about setting “New Year’s Resolutions.” For some of us, losing weight, eating healthier, and being more active is on the wish list toward our ideal self- image. A new year is always a great time for a new beginning, but of course it would be even better if it continued throughout the rest of the year and accumulated over time into progressively better health. Setting the right goals is essential to improving health and feeling successful. The favorite goal for most Americans is losing weight. But losing weight is not necessarily essential to improving one’s health and in many cases any weight initially lost is regained in equal or greater proportion as a person gives up on their drastic diet/exercise routine. Successful lifestyle changes result from small consistent adjustments that can be maintained as part of an overall healthier lifestyle.

Making a commitment to live a healthier lifestyle is not as daunting as many people imagine. Altering small daily habits can result in lasting improvements in health without requiring a full hour of dedicated exercise time in the busy schedule that we all seem to share. Making consistent everyday choices to be more active can make all the difference in your health. Here are some simple suggestions that you can easily fit into your schedule. Choose one or a couple of these suggestions and practice them until they simply become habits. You will likely not lose drastic amounts of weight or put on tons of muscle, but keep in mind that your health includes many more aspects than simply how you look or the number you see on the scale.

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