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No Comments [ Add Comment ]Mission: Get moving, get physical during long winter months
By JAMIE LAMPROSOGDEN -- Pick a card, any card. If you chose a heart, stand on one foot and do eight squats. Got a diamond? Run backwards.
In an effort to motivate children to exercise, Jo Garuccio came up with an inexpensive game that will not only help them develop good habits for life, but also prepare them for the ski and snowboard season.
"Kids hibernate in the wintertime and there are so many activities they could and should be involved in," Garuccio said. "From my standpoint, a child should be exposed to as many activities as possible so they can develop the fundamentals of good exercise."
Garuccio is the program director for the Ski Utah School Assembly Program and staff training coordinator for the Canyons Ski and Snowboard School. She presented her game on Saturday at the annual Utah Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance conference held at Weber State University.
UAHPERD's mission is aligned with the national organization's mission to promote and support creative and healthy lifestyles through high quality programs in health, physical education, recreation, dance and sports. Physical education teachers and students from all over the state attended the conference. The idea was to learn creative ways to get all ages of students involved in an exercise program.
Garuccio's card game is designed for middle school students. To begin, teachers remove the face cards and lower numbers from a deck of cards, so it has only the numbers six through 10 in each suit. Next, they consult a poster that includes activities that correspond to each suit in the deck. For instance, hearts may represent balance exercises, spades represent core strength, clubs represent upper and lower body strength and diamonds are for agility and quickness.
"The student will pick a card from the deck, and the number will be the number of repetitions they have to perform," Garuccio said. "They can go over to the poster and pick under the list of each suit the exercise they want to perform. Or they can trade cards with another student. This gives them an option and way to make decisions for themselves."
Some of the activities under each suit category can include freestyle jumps, ski team balance drills, crunches, push-ups and squats.
"All of the exercises are designed to help you ski and snowboard, but they are also designed to help you for life," Garuccio said. "We have a real problem with childhood obesity right now and the fact of the matter is, children should be getting 60 minutes of activity every day."
Garuccio is frustrated that some school districts provide physical education for only half the school year.
"That's like telling the child they only have to exercise half of the year," she said.
"Why don't they do it a full year and have it three days a week? It doesn't make sense to me at all. We've got to keep our kids motivated all year, not just for a few months."
Some of the other activities at the conference included line dance and Lummi sticks, kindergarten through 6th grade fitness games, beginning folk dance moves, speedminton, and throwing games. Former Brigham Young University football coach LaVell Edwards was the keynote speaker.
"This is a great conference because everyone is coming together in an effort to teach more individual sports to kids," said MaryJo Tarallo, director of education at Snow Sports Industries of America in Virginia.
"Team sports are important, but getting away from them and into individual activities will last a lifetime."
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