Leisure for Life Middle Childhood PDF

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Jerry Li RST 316 Leisure for Life: Middle Childhood Dear public official, I feel I am not just writing for my own self, but I am writing on behalf of every middle aged kid in school. As a member of a health provider, I’m becoming concerned with the overall time that’s being used less to spend on daily activities for school-aged children. Since you’re a public official, all I ask is for you to please spend some time on evaluating my explanation because to me, the support that each child could benefit from you allowing these certain requests can do wonders for their future health. Not only do I expect that you seriously consider my requests, but as a whole, you can be doing a great service to promote an easier lifestyle for many young children. I can’t imagine beginning to begin telling you how things are these days throughout the darkening period of time involving Covid. Lots of kids have begun to become really depressed wearing masks these days, and I feel most kids have partially lost their ability to focus on the task at hand. It’s not easy being the teacher, either because they’re the ones who not only obviously have to teach the kids all the curriculum, but even they are starting to feel the effects of it, thus losing a little of their energy teaching in the process. It’s easy to just say you’re going to motivate yourself through all of this, but this is a challenging period of time in our world. Moving forward, I feel the ability to have inadequate activity/free time towards children ages 612 shouldn’t be enforced to a higher extremity. The ability to have students not being able to do any kind of activity for at least 20 minutes, or not being able to do any physical exercises is something no youngling wants to endure. At times, kids are dazed out, not paying attention to the task at hand. The kids should instead have more opportunities to become more social, rather than being immobilized in a classroom all the time. While school is much dedicated to learning, the kids need to have some much needed time mentally to themselves. According to the Human Kinetics Journals, “Physical activity levels decline as adolescents make the transition into adulthood. Approximately one-third (31.1%) of adults are physically inactive.” (Murphy). That would have suggested in poor management of physical activities

when they were younger. Thus, I would suggest we need to have these kids receive sporadic breaks throughout their days to make them fresh for the long haul. School time for kids typically runs for 6-8 months, at about say 5-6, maybe even 7-8 hours a day. That’s a long time physically and mentally for anyone to overcome. Therefore, having a little bit of an easier schedule where each course can flip flop with a longer gym class, lunch, break sessions will not only enhance the kids ability to become more free, but once that time rolls around to focus on their studies, they’re going to be more proactive involving group projects, activities, etc. According to Nicholas Maldanado, “While scheduled free time in the school day can be challenging to accommodate, finding the time to make it happen is worth it. Free time provides students with a sense that they are trusted, responsible members of your school community. It gives them the time they need to process and recuperate between classes. As a result they will be more engaged in their classes and more excited to come to school every day.” (Maldanado). Something to keep in mind is their parents as well. They already struggle to be without their children for such a long time that even some are now lobbying for learning to go back to being online. According to the NBC News, “Before July 27, 58 percent of those surveyed said they wanted their children in a classroom full time this year. Afterward, that figure dropped to 43 percent.” (Einhorn). No parent wants to see their child struggle at such a young age. If they see an opportunity to help their children, they’ll go through any wall to do so. If children are appearing to struggle with fatigue/lack of energy towards school at a young age, then what happens when they get older into their High School/College days? It’s going to become even tougher as life goes on. Health is a big factor through all of it. The Health Education Research textbook mentioned, “Regular physical activity participation throughout childhood provides immediate health benefits, by positively effecting body composition and musculo-skeletal development (Malina and Bouchard, 1991), and reducing the presence of coronary heart disease risk factors.” (Gutin et al., 1994). We would be doing the kids a disfavor, if we don’t let them physically perform any activity for any more than a few minutes. It’s up to us to keep them in an active mood where their bodies don’t have to sit around for long periods of time without doing anything. Anyone who performs a lack of activity would increase their chances for

their health to become a major setback in their lives. Among those diseases are heart disease, cancer, anxiety and depression all come to play involving those who lack physical inactivity. As a result, doing activities before and after school, or during gym class/recess would promote physical activity as well as the physical, cognitive, and psychosocial health and development of children in the long haul. Perhaps even serving children more healthy foods such as salads, fruits, and veggies can better increase their energy levels too. A few games that come to mind to promote such health and development are hide and seek, tag, go fish. According to Pawet F. Nowak, "Physical activity relates significantly with the quality of life, however not all its types. Physical activity in the household is most positively correlated to the quality of life." (Nowak). Every single one of these have many things in common, but the main goal out of all of them is to help continue the development of young children. Overall, every day, hour, minute, second shouldn’t be wasted while in school. It’s up to us as health providers to play a hand with the development of young children as they age into proper, mature adults. With your help, I’m confident our mission statement will pull through and each step we take is getting one step closer into creating healthy lifestyles for children as they continue through their educational careers. Thank you for being a public official in our society. Thank you for all that you do/serve. I look forward to hearing back from you in the coming days. Thank you for your understanding. Sincerely, Jerry Li

Works Cited: https://www.arthurmorganschool.org/importance-of-free-time-for-students/ https://www.nbcnews.com/news/education/worried-about-covid-most-parents-no-longer-want-

kids-school-n1278128 https://academic.oup.com/her/article/20/1/14/632614 https://journals.humankinetics.com/configurable/content/journals$002fjpah$002f15$002f10$002f article-p737.xml?t:ac=journals%24002fjpah%24002f15%24002f10%24002farticle-p737.xml https://www.hindawi.com/journals/bmri/2019/9791281/...