Timing the Vegetables

The Journal of Preventive Medicine (via TreeHugger) says that in elementary school, Kids will eat more veggies if you let them play first : TreeHugger

Moving recess to before lunch increased consumption of fruits and vegetables by "0.16 servings per child", which might sound small, but it represents a 54% increase, which is huge. Pre-lunch recess also increased the number of children eating at least one serving of fruits or vegetables by 10% points.
Another beneficial effect of this simple change was the dramatic reduction in wasted food, by about 40%.

It's the sort of thing that I would class as "worth a try", both for schools and households. Wouldn't you?

FUNtervals

Fun and games make for better learners -- ScienceDaily

Four minutes of physical activity can improve behaviour in the classroom for primary school students, according to new research by Brendon Gurd.

A brief, high-intensity interval exercise, or a "FUNterval," for Grade 2 and Grade 4 students reduced off-task behaviours like fidgeting or inattentiveness in the classroom.

... FUNtervals involved actively acting out tasks like "making s'mores" where students would lunge to "collect firewood," "start the fire" by crouching and exploding into a star jump and squatting and jumping to "roast the marshmallows" to make the S'more. Each activity moves through a 20-second storyline of quick, enthusiastic movements followed by 10 seconds of rest for eight intervals.

I would expect this to become rote and lose some of its effectiveness after a few weeks or months, but retain some for years...it seems somewhere in between the adult-structured "games" of a gym class on the one hand, and the kid-structured play that Peter Gray talks about. I'd also think that it might be possible to keep it from becoming rote by having some of the eight activities be chosen by groups of kids, and at least one of them developed by those groups as replacements for the original set.

Reasons to send kids outside

Sometimes the best technology is the kind that's been growing since before there were humans to appreciate it. This spring, Business Insider noted 11 Reasons You Should Go Outside, with links to research papers supporting each reason:

1. Improved short-term memory

In one study, University of Michigan students were given a brief memory test, then divided into two groups.

One group took a walk around an arboretum, and the other half took a walk down a city street....those who had walked among trees did almost 20% percent better than the first time. The ones who had taken in city sights instead did not consistently improve.... ...

5. Better vision

At least in children, a fairly large body of research has found that outdoor activity may have a protective effect on the eyes, reducing the risk of developing nearsightedness (myopia)....

6. Improved concentration

... ...kids with ADHD ... have been found to concentrate better after just 20 minutes in a park. "'Doses of nature' might serve as a safe, inexpensive, widely accessible new tool ... for managing ADHD symptoms," researchers wrote.

... 7. Sharper thinking and creativity

"Imagine a therapy that had no known side effects, was readily available, and could improve your cognitive functioning at zero cost." That's the dramatic opening to a 2008 paper describing the promise of so-called "nature therapy" — or, as a non-academic might call it, "time outside." ...

Another study found that people immersed in nature for four days ... boosted their performance on a creative problem-solving test by 50%.

They also note other kinds of reasons which are real, but not what this blog is about. Speaking very loosely, it looks like trees are better (for your kids' brains) than grass which is better than pavement which is better than indoor activity which is better than sitting down. (Maybe for your brains, too.)

Exercise and ADHD

I tend to think of some level of ADHD as "normal", and I've always associated it with the need for kids to run around before sitting. I find this disturbing: Exercise may lead to better school performance for kids with ADHD

drugs have proven largely effective in treating many of the 2.5 million school-aged American children with ADHD,
In the study, Pontifex and colleagues asked 40 children aged 8 to 10, half of whom had ADHD, to spend 20 minutes either walking briskly on a treadmill or reading while seated. The children then took a brief reading comprehension and math exam similar to longer standardized tests. They also played a simple computer game in which they had to ignore visual stimuli to quickly determine which direction a cartoon fish was swimming.
The results showed all of the children performed better on both tests after exercising.
"To date there really isn't a whole lot of evidence that schools can pull from to justify why these physical education programs should be in existence," he said. "So what we're trying to do is target our research to provide that type of evidence."

Now, why would that be disturbing? Very simple: we seem to be putting a couple of million kids on medication without doing that research first. No, surely that's not what it means. This has to be a misrepresentation.
Or then again, maybe not.