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Recreational paradise … in your own backyard?
As a kid growing up in 1960s suburban America, I played “stadium” baseball, rode intricate routes on my bike, trampolined, played tackle football, engaged in hours-long games of hide-’n’-seek, went sledding played indoor basketball and tightroped. And I did it all without leaving our block.
I was reminded of my cul-de-sac-as-adventure-park youth Sunday by [...]
Small Steps
21. May 2010
Sometimes — a lot of the time — it’s the small steps that get us headed in the right direction.
That’s the thinking behind the Small Steps Web site run by the government (the White House and the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services).
Small Steps is a small but effective, non-overwhelming Web site that appreciates [...]
Childhood obesity: There’s an app for that
13. May 2010
Have trouble prying your kids from the computer screen to go for a bike ride or play in the yard? There’s an app for that. Or there will be if enough enterprising programmers heed the Apps for Healthy Kids competition being sponsored by First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! program.
Apps for Healthy Kids is awarding [...]
The green 5, a “plan” and more
10. May 2010
Assorted news from the research world to get your week kick started:
Green exercise? Really pressed for time? Is carving out 60 minutes a day to work out, as recommended by the National Institutes of Health, beyond the pale of your schedule? Even 30 minutes broken into bite-size 10-minute segments isn’t doable? According to a study [...]
School lunch: Think inside the (lunch)box
2. May 2010
Story in today’s The News & Observer about the high cost and other challenges of feeding kids a healthy lunch at school. Healthy food is more expensive — and thus costs the kids/parents more — and because most high schools at least let older kids leave campus over lunch, there’s competition from the outside. I [...]
Continue reading...Exploring Cary’s Kids Together Park
18. April 2010
If you’ve ever visited Kids Together Park in Cary, you probably had no idea it was designed back in the mid-1990s as a handicap-accessible park. There are no signs touting the park’s handicap-accessible features, no special section with specially designed equipment. That, says one of the adults responsible for the park’s existence, is by design.
“We [...]
The wild adventures of Roland Smith
4. April 2010
In a society suffering from what Richard Louv has labeled a “nature deficit disorder,” author Roland Smith creates a dilemma. Louv’s “Last Child in the Woods” has created a movement since it came out in 2007 to get our electronically-anchored kids off the couch, out the door and into nature. Roland Smith’s adventure-based novels would [...]
Continue reading...Rolesville grows a park — and more
30. March 2010
Lately, I’ve had a gift for divining cool, off-the-radar municipal parks. First, there was the new White Deer Park in Garner (off the radar, perhaps, only because it only opened in November). A week later I rediscovered Cedarock Park in Alamance County. This past Saturday: Main Street Park in Rolesville.
The latter was perhaps the most [...]
Playground Boot Camp
25. March 2010
“I oughta be doing that with you,” the moderately overweight mom who was watching her son yelled.
“We’re starting a class in April,” Polly Eslinger yelled back. “You’re welcome to join us.”
Eslinger’s response seemed to surprise the woman: We were on Cary’s Middle Creek Park Playground at the time, six grown-ups mixed among kids cavorting on [...]
Take the Pepsi challenge, snack food industry
18. March 2010
Tuesday morning I was at a Brains & Bodies workshop conducted by Advocates for Health in Action, a consortium of local public and private sector groups “shaping a community where healthful eating and physical activity are the way of life.” Brains & Bodies is a program of the Wake County PTA designed to encourage healthy [...]
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24. May 2010
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