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In her first release to the nation, Surgeon General Regina Benjamin encouraged communities to build and enhance infrastructures to support more walking and bicycling, and to improve the safety of neighborhoods to facilitate outdoor physical activity. The Surgeon General's Vision for a Healthy and Fit Nation highlights the alarming trend of obesity in this country, especially amoung young people, and asks all Americans to join her in a grassroots effort to commit to changes that promote the health and wellness of our families and communities. Dr. Benjamin's first recommendation is to improve our communities by creating healthier environments through greater accessibility to outdoor recreational facilities.
In Germany and Denmark, children of primary age experience a special brand of school called Waldkindergarten, or forest kindergarten. There are no plastic commercial toys, computers, or DVD players. Children spend the day almost exclusively in nature, climing trees, singing, splashing around in streams and wading in mud, and designing and building their own toys from natural materials. They exercise independent decision-making, creativity and curiosisty, practice social skills without adult intervention, and choose how they want to explore the natural world. Rustic shelters provide escape from the worst weather (the school runs outdoors year-round), and the staff, known as 'players', offer child-centered guidance to create stories, songs, crafts and games.
Research shows that children who attend Waldkindergartens outperform their peers in several categories, including creativity, physical ability, social ability, as well as cognition.
What if all children had the opportunity to choose how and where to spend their play time, and didn't need to rely on adults to drive them to parks, playgrounds, and open spaces, but could ski, skate, scoot, bicycle, or walk safely to their play destinations? Safe Routes to Play: A Child-Centered Transportation Initiative aims to achieve this goal.
Safe Routes To Play has five main objectives. More...
