After each meal is complete, our parents come together to share in the savory dishes and talk about cooking strategies. For example, we talk about ways to save money on ingredients. We also discuss how to engage children in the cooking process. This might entail reading labels or talking about mathematical quantities such as half and quarter cup. Mothers also agreed that this is a great way to get children to try new foods.

Everyone who participated felt that this was the best cooking class they’ve ever participated in. Thanks to Naxielly Dominguez for facilitating the course! As she always says, “Cooking is an art and the meal is your masterpiece”.

Margaret Caspe, The Children’s Aid Society in New York

According to Mayo Clinic research, encouraging young children to engage in sports will give them a “head start on lifelong fitness” and helps to prevent obesity. To avoid injury and to be sensitive to the child’s physical ability and maturity level, it is advisable to enroll them in age-appropriate sporting activities.

The Mayo Clinic classifies this demographic into 3 age groups: ages 2-5, 6-7 and 8+. The preschoolers and kindergarteners, with their limited attention span, should do unstructured exercise like running, climbing, playing catch and tricycle riding. The 6-7 year olds are more coordinated and can take direction well, so sports like softball, martial arts, gymnastics, track and soccer are ideal. For the 8 and over crowd, most organized sports – including contact sports – work well.

American youths take their sports seriously: there are 30 to 45 million kids aged 6-18 participating in one or more school and/or community-based athletic programs.  And sports provide a positive psychological effect on children – they are less likely to be depressed or anxious.  An old adage is well in play here: a fit body begets a fit mind!

Additional quote from Kelsey Stevens, Director, Fitness & Recreation Programs, Children’s Aid:

These avenues are challenged through basketball, baseball, tumbling, sports management, swimming and a host of other activities. These activities provide a wide range of developmental processes such as hand-eye coordination and the social atmosphere.  Many of our youth strive on being competitive but with the understanding of doing your personal best. Though the aforementioned caters to our extramural teams, our intramural activities add to our focus of sports and fitness.

Some of those activities are flag football, dodge ball, kickball, color call, volleyball and a host of other interactive games. Through these avenues we continue to develop their social interaction, sportsmanship, academic awareness, cardio, stamina, flexibility and a desire to accomplish a goal.

Some of the methods we use to approach, recruit, involve and engage kids in sports are the benefits of social interaction, intramural and extramural games, a friendly and caring atmosphere, informative and knowledgeable staff as well as providing  the opportunity to engage them in discussions about being a student athlete and what it takes to be successful in any objective.

Many of us have watched with deep concern as the children in our communities have become overweight or obese seemingly overnight. The problem is national, affecting one in three children in the U.S. And according to First Lady Michelle Obama the problem is worse in African-American and Latino communities, affecting one in two children.

The First Lady’s Let’s Move initiative to tackle childhood obesity, announced on February 9, could not come at a more opportune time. Childhood obesity is known to contribute to high blood pressure in children and type 2 diabetes; these are illnesses that we used to see only in adults and that can affect children for their entire lives.

As Ms. Obama stated, it’s about how children feel, not how they look. When children eat healthfully and move more they will feel better and have more energy. Vulnerable children are constantly barraged with messages encouraging them to eat heavily processed foods. Let’s Move seeks to give parents the tools they need to help children get and stay healthy.

At The Children’s Aid Society, we are working to combat childhood obesity. Our Go!Healthy initiative educates children about wellness and the joys of healthful cooking and eating from birth through adolescence and beyond. Our health providers have even been able to measure BMI in almost 90% of their young patients – well over the national norm. (For more information about Children’s Aid’s Go!Healthy initiatives, please visit our nutrition pages.

Children’s Aid emphasizes healthful eating, relaxation techniques and movement (including yoga) for children and their parents. We introduce youth to the pleasures of preparing and enjoying “real food” that is both nutritious and delicious: an essential step toward health and well-being. We have an innovative foodservice program in which meals for children in our community centers are cooked from scratch and based on whole and fresh foods, especially fruits, vegetables and whole grains. And we advocate for policy changes that enable parents to make healthy choices in their neighborhoods.

I envision a world where affordable and healthy fruit and vegetables are as easily available to children as potato chips and soda. In our programs, we have shown parents that achieving better health for their children and themselves can be fun! As the First Lady said when she described her initiative, small changes add up, and incremental changes can start making us all feel better right now. Let’s Move!

Richard R. Buery, Jr.
President & Chief Executive Officer
The Children’s Aid Society

Click here to view the embedded video.

Image Courtesy of Cdc.gov

Childhood obesity is a serious health condition affecting over one-third of American children, from state to state.  A recent national report, “F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies are Failing in America 2009,” released by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), issued a list of health reform recommendations to combat obesity. It emphasizes the importance of preventative medical care, such as nutrition counseling and screening for obesity-related illnesses like Type 2 Diabetes and high blood pressure. The Report also recommends increasing the number of programs available in communities and schools that make nutritional food readily available and affordable to children and their families.

According to the RWJF Report, the fight against child obesity cannot make a  nationwide impact without a concerted, national strategy implemented at the federal, state and municipal levels in collaboration with businesses, schools, and communities.

In another report, “School Meals: Building Blocks for Healthy Children,” the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommends that standards be set by the USDA for nutritious menu planning in schools, where fruit, vegetable and grains would pre-dominate, and sodium and saturated fats would be significantly reduced.

The following quote is from Stefania Patinella, Director of Nutrition, The Children’s Aid Society:

The Children’s Aid Society applauds RWJF and the IOM for bringing attention to arguably the most urgent health issue facing our nation’s children. In 2003, Children’s Aid launched the Go!Healthy initiative to educate children and families about wellness and the joys of healthful cooking and eating.  Go Healthy includes: Go! Kids, a toddler food and fitness program; Go! Chefs, a hands-on cooking and nutrition education program for children and families; and Healthy Meals, our foodservice program that feeds approximately 1,500 children each day in the early childhood, after-school and teen programs.

The Children’s Aid Healthy Meals program adheres to and exceeds the IMO recommendations. Children’s meals are made entirely from scratch from original recipes that are based on whole and fresh foods, especially fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Healthy Meals constitutes a profound change to the heat-and-serve model of foodservice, and to implement it successfully we developed a Cook’s Training program to educate cooks in healthful food preparation and basic nutrition. The program has made a profound impact across our community centers—not only in increasing the nutrients and taste of foods we serve, but in broadening the palates and eating behaviors of children, teachers and parents. As districts around the country turn their attention to better school food, Children’s Aid is leading the equally important effort to provide better food in early childhood programs (where children consume up to 80% of their daily calories) and after-school programs.

Child obesity has morphed into a serious crisis, requiring immediate attention on the part of families, schools and local government. The Children’s Aid Society has adopted an aggressive three-pronged approach to battle this problem, centering on the basic concept of sustainable living.

First, children and families must be educated about nutrition. In a recent podcast interview, Stefania Patinella, Manager of The Children’s Aid Society Food and Nutrition Programs, pointed out that, “Food is a very natural thing for kids to get into…they’re always hungry and they love to eat!”  That’s why our Go!Kids works, where kids aged 2-5 can learn about fitness and food, and  through hands-on cooking classes like Go!Chefs, where budding young chefs get to  create culinary feasts.

Secondly, Children’s Aid advocates initiatives such as the Green Cart Bill, helping low-income families gain access to quality, affordable healthy food. Safeguarding the health and wellness of disadvantaged children has been central to our mission for over 150 years, and that includes the availability of healthy and nutritious food. The kids play an important advocacy role as well, learning about gardening by becoming young “farmers,” and running youthmarkets from their schools in neighborhoods like East Harlem and South Bronx.

And finally, it’s about taking responsibility for what we feed our kids. We feed over 1500 children kids a day in our community schools and after-school programs. For some children, this may be their only decent meal of the day, so it’s critical that we provide the most nutritious foods. We’re committed to reducing the percentage of obese and overweight children in our community, and by working at education and advocating for the disadvantaged youth in New York, we’re working at making apples and carrots more enticing than chips and doughnuts!

image courtesy of www.sayandplayfamily.com

Stephanie spoke about the benefits of eliminating habits that encourage poor oral motor skills (e.g., sippy cups, bottles, pacifiers) and the importance of encouraging language skills through the right level of modeling for each child.   She discussed the importance of not only reading to children every day, but how important it is to choose books that will encourage speech and language skills.  Stephanie pointed out how crucial it is for babies, toddlers and even school age children to be read to face-to-face so that they can observe facial expressions.  Our faces, and especially our mouths should always be visible to children in conversation.

Staff left the training excited and referred to the workshop as “eye opening.”  Many of the participants, who are parents themselves, spoke about how they would immediately begin to incorporate Stephanie’s tips into their work with children at home and at school.

Stephanie Sigal MA CCC-SLP offers speech, language and oral motor therapy for babies, toddlers and school age children in Manhattan.  She specializes in assessing and treating articulation disorders from an oral motor perspective.  Stephanie’s methods improve speech clarity and resolve problems such as tongue thrusting and drooling.  Stephanie also has family-friendly language programs to help young children maximize language skills.

You can learn more about Stephanie and her Manhattan-based speech therapy company Say and Play, at: http://www.sayandplayfamily.com/

The 70 students enrolled in the program participate for an average of 2-6 hours per week. Students are taught music fundamentals –reading music, history, theory and related skills.

A keystone of the program is instruction in a variety of instruments: percussion, violin, bass guitar, trumpet, saxophone, keyboard and flute.  Teaching artists instruct the students in a small group setting, ultimately seeking to enable youth to create their own original music through improvisation. This DHLC after-school music program creates specific opportunities for instruction leading up to performances, promoting self-confidence and poise in each student.

The music program connects parents and other community members to the center by providing them with occasions to listen to and celebrate music though performances both within the center and in the surrounding community. Students in the performing groups, such as the Drew Drummers and the Harmony in Harlem Jazz Ensemble, share their talents throughout the community.

This past year, the students performed at the CAS 8^th Annual Children’s Art Show, Make Music New York, and Harlem Week. We look forward to another year of jamming in Harlem and the inspiration that music brings to our youth.

-Mary Newcomb

Representatives from neighborhood hospitals, clinics, and health agencies provided information and free screenings for the families.

Information tables were set up in the gym and a mobile health van was parked out in front of the Center.

In addition, short workshops focused on topics such as women’s health, nutritious cooking, and health care access for immigrants.  It was a very healthy day!

Go!Healthy is directed by The Children’s Aid Society and is aimed at combating obesity in children, teens and adults by teaching them about the joys of fresh, delicious and healthful foods. Go!Healthy is “food education” that makes healthful foods fun and accessible for children and families in New York’s low-income neighborhoods. Hands-on cooking, health education, yoga (pictured) and learning to be “conscious consumers” helps Go!Healthy turn the tide of unhealthy eating.

New York’s Children Aid Society also launched Go!Kids in 2003, an early childhood obesity prevention program for three- to five-year-olds. Currently at six sites in Manhattan and the Bronx, Go!Kids will be implemented at four additional Children’s Aid locations in New York in 2009, as well as at eight external Head Start programs. Go!Kids was recently featured on Rachael Ray’s non-profit organization website, Yum-o.org. These important educational programs continue the fight for the health, and future health, of thousands of needy children.