Active kids

Boys have been lagging behind girls in recent years when it comes to performance in schools.

To help reverse the trend, an author and teacher who’s spent 30 years in the classroom thinks we need to accept that the early years of school are different for boys than for girls.

Michael Reist, who’s also a father of four, was on CBC Radio’s Blue Sky recently to talk about his new book, Raising Boys in a New Kind of World (click on the link to hear the interview).

One of the challenges boys face, Reist said, is that there are almost no male teachers in the earliest grades elementary school that can help mentor boys.

Then there’s the tendency for boys to be more active. Boys move more, they fidget, they doodle, and these days, they have more technology distracting their attention.

“These kids, they have a very different attention span than they did 20 years ago,” Reist said. “They didn’t create the world they’ve come into…They’ve got a lot more temptations than we did.”

We’re encouraging members in kidSKAN to fill out a survey on new physical activity/sedentary behaviour guidelines for children aged 0-4 that are being developed by the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology (CSEP).

New Canadian Physical Activity Guidelines for older children were released in January 2011.

CSEP is looking for feedback on the draft guidelines. The link to the survey monkey is only open for 10 days, so fill it out quickly. It should only take about 10 minutes.

Dr. Nazeem Muhajarine of kidSKAN spoke to the CBC Radio Morning Edition’s Sheila Coles in September about the Smart Cities, Healthy Kids project.

We’ve obtained the interview from CBC and have added photographs and video from the project. The interview can be found on the kidSKAN YouTube channel.

We’ve featured Smart Cities, Healthy Kids on the kidSKAN site. The three-year study is currently looking at how Saskatoon’s built environment influences children’s activity levels.

It’s part of a movement that looks at how we shape our communities and how they, in turn, shape our young people.

In Edinburgh, Scotland, last fall, the Making Space 2010: Architecture and Design for Children and Young People brought together some of the best examples from around the world on how to promote children’s development through architecture and design.

More recently, the organizers published a Making Space report that touched on the key themes from the conference.

It’s full of examples from 26 countries around the world, all aimed at promoting design innovation, creativity and sustainability for projects geared towards children and young people aged 0-18. Canada’s entry on the shortlist, the Bloorview Kids Rehab in Toronto, is a rehabilitation and complex continuing care facility. It was credited for combining all aspects of rehabilitation, research, therapy and education, under a single roof.

Does where we live influence how active our kids are?

That’s the big question researchers from the Saskatchewan Population Health and Evaluation Research Unit (SPHERU) are asking in the three-year, multi-phase Smart Cities, Healthy Kids study.

We’ve put together a short video about the study for the kidSKAN YouTube channel as an introduction. (The study is also featured in the Alberta Centre for Active Living's September newsletter. The article is co-authored by kidSKAN's Dr. Nazeem Muhajarine, who leads SPHERU's Healthy Children research team, and Tracy Ridalls, Research Coordinator for the Smart Cities Healthy project.)

READ Saskatoon is hosting an upcoming workshop on raising boys, Boy Smarts Action Talk.
Barry MacDonald is a skilled educator, author and registered clinical counsellor. He will be presenting the workshop at Circle Drive Alliance Church, 3035 Preston Ave. S, on Sept. 17, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Boys typically have a more difficult time than girls do at sitting, listening, writing or negotiating with peers. In recent years, they have consistently trailed girls in academic performance, graduation rates and at taking on extra-curricular leadership roles.

The presentation will examine what’s happening under the surface when boys’ scholastic or emotional development is stalled and they compensate with shows of “hyper-masculinity.” Participants will learn “how to talk so boys will listen and listen so boys will talk.”