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FACEBOOK LIVE: Are our kids getting enough physical activity" This Thursday, June 16 at 1 p.m. EST, tune in to our Facebook page for a Q&A with ParticipACTION’s Dr. Allana LeBlanc to discuss the findings of the 2016 ParticipACTION Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth. Get your questions ready!
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Six-year-old Aislinn Frank is dribbling a basketball across a gym floor at the Vivo for Healthier Generations recreation centre in Calgary, along with 12 other kindergarteners.
?Okay, now raise the ball above your head,? directs the instructor. ?Can you move it in a circle around your head" Good. Now, around your body.?
Aislinn manipulates the ball with a big smile. She?s flushed and out of breath, and clearly enjoying herself. Over the past four months she?s been learning to ice skate, swim, tumble, and play gym-based games like this one, as a participant in Vivo?s 4-in-1 program, which teaches physical literacy skills to children. The program?s creator, Mount Royal University movement education instructor Nadine Van Wyk, says the goal is to expose kids to a variety of games and sports to get them sliding, splashing, swinging, balancing, throwing, running and kicking their way to mastering the movement skills necessary for them to become active adults.
But as the latest ParticipACTION Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth, released today, shows, not all Canadian children are as active or physically literate a...