I am going to share a little video clip and song about what children have to say on the matter.
Thursday
Kids Advocating for Kids - More Recess
Let's protect our future by providing recess and physical education classes to the children of today. Today's children are tomorrow's leaders and professionals, so let's help them to be successful in all aspects of their life. Give them the simple joys of recess, it will make a difference.
Classroom Performance
Everyone from early childhood through adulthood, benefits from a break. Both children and adults learn better and more quickly when their time is distributed with breaks than when all their effort is concentrated in one area of focus for a long period of time. People function better when they have a change of pace, especially young children. Young children don't process information as easily as adolescents and adults, due to immaturity of the central nervous system and lack of experience. Which is why young children need recess breaks while at school. A number of studies have demonstrated that outside light increases academic learning and productivity.
Thanks to advances in brain research, we now know that most of the brain is activated during physical activity, much more so than when doing seatwork. Movement increases the capacity of blood vessels, allowing for the delivery of oxygen, water, and glucose (“brain food”) to the brain. These factors significantly increase the brain’s performance! Numerous studies have shown that students who are physically active have improved academic performance, achieve higher test scores, and demonstrate a better attitude toward school.
Here is a fun little video clip from Disney's TV show Recess that demonstrates the effects of recess on classroom performance.
Behavior
Is it important to you that children behave appropriately? It is important to parents and teachers and it is a proven fact that recess increases appropriate behavior. Children are more likely to miss behave or act-out if they are stuck in a classroom all day with no time for outside play and social interactions. When children misbehave in a classroom it distracts the class and ends up wasting time. The time wasted is often long enough for recess. So rather than wasting time dealing with inappropriate behavior in our classroom, why not allow children to go outside for recess and the inappropriate behavior and disruptions will significantly decrease.
A research was done in an urban school district with a policy against recess. Permission was received to administer recess one day a week in two fourth-grade classes to determine the impact on the children’s behavior on recess and non-recess days. The result was that the 43 children became more on-task and less fidgety on days when they had recess. Sixty percent of the children, including the five suffering from attention deficit disorder, worked more and fidgeted less on recess days. The research demonstrated that a 15-minute recess resulted in the children being 5 percent more on-task and 9 percent less fidgety, which translated into 20 minutes saved during the day.
Stress
The National Association for the Education of Young Children recommends unstructured physical play as a developmentally appropriate means of reducing stress in children’s lives – and studies show that stress has a negative impact on learning as well as on health. For many children, especially those who are hyperactive or potentially so, recess is an opportunity to blow off steam. Outdoors, children can engage in behaviors (loud, messy, and boisterous) considered unacceptable and annoying indoors. And because recess is a break from structure and expectations, children have an opportunity to take control of their world, which is a rarity in their lives.
Social Skills
Social skills are a very important thing to learn at a young age, because you will use those skills in everyday life, forever. With social skills, several other skills come along such as communication, interacting with peers, self-esteem, appropriate behaviors, development of gross motor skills, problem solving, and so forth. Children need to be able to play and explore and just have fun. Giving the children time to do what they want and play outside at recess is one of the best ways for children to learn.
Recess may be the only time children have to learn these social and communication skills. While in the classroom most children aren't allowed to talk and interact with their peers and once they go home for the day they often times just spend the time playing inside. Neighborhoods are not the way they used to be and children are not outside as often interacting with other children. If we remove the right for children to have recess during school we are also decreasing their chance of being a successful adult. Children need recess and the voice of parents, educators, and others in the community are who can make a difference and keep it in our children's schools. Teachers shouldn't be allowed to take away a child's recess as a form of punishment either.
Wednesday
Childhood Obesity
In today's world children are becoming less and less active, because of all the advances in technology. Many young children are spending their time watching TV, playing computer games, video games, and using iPod and iPad apps. Children need to be spending more time outdoors, running around, playing sports, and just staying active. As if the technology advances are bad enough, schools are starting to get rid of PE and recess. How is this fair to our children, the professionals of our future? The answer is simple. It's NOT.
Obesity in young children is a serious issue and by not giving them the opportunity to go outside and be active we are forcing this obesity factor upon them. Obesity is the leading factor of many other serious medical problems. As educators, families, friends, and neighbors of young children we need to be their voice. Go to your child's school and share this information with them.
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