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Teachers relearning how to play hopscotch Old-fashioned games intended to combat obesity among kids Anne Marie Owens National Post October 18, 2004 The latest effort in the campaign to combat obesity among schoolchildren revolves around instructing teachers across Canada about how to play hopscotch, four square, skipping and other traditional playground games. The launch of the nationwide program aimed at getting children moving is an indication of how society has lost touch with the games that once dominated schoolyard play. "I think we're actually reclaiming part of our Canadian culture -- being outside playing those great classic games of four square, hopscotch, skipping, wall ball. We're not so much reinventing them, we're reconnecting with them," says John Byl, a university physical education professor. Mr. Byl is also president of the Canadian Intramural Recreation Association in Ontario, which is delivering the schoolyard games program, called Active Playgrounds. While it may seem strange to think teachers need to be taught games they all likely played in their youth, organizers say they developed the program because they found teachers had forgotten how to play the classics and a generation of children was left wondering what to do with all those lines and squares on the playground. "So often you'd go into a schoolyard and you'd see kids throwing things on to the hopscotch squares, but they didn't really know what they were doing," says Pat Doyle, the retired teacher who has been delivering the program to teachers across Ontario as part of a pilot project. The program stems from games he developed to combat student lethargy and stop children from standing around in the schoolyard, which were first part of a curriculum guide called Awesome Asphalt Games, which then grew into a book he co-authored called Game On, which is a user's guide to dozens of children's games. He says he realized the need for this kind of school-based program when parents and teachers began clamouring for the guides to help get the children in their charge motivated and moving. Countless studies have documented the rise in childhood obesity across North America and inspired an ongoing lament about the decline in student activity. Last year, Statistics Canada reported that 37% of Canadian children aged 2 through 11 are overweight, with half of that number considered obese. Physicians raised the alarm after beginning to see Type 2 diabetes, once known as "adult-onset" diabetes, in teenagers. The ensuing panic over these kinds of statistics has inspired calls for mandatory and enhanced physical education programs in schools, bans on junk foods in cafeterias, and the implementation of this kind of program to bolster playground activity. In a school gymnasium in Niagara Falls tomorrow, Mr. Doyle will take a group of about 50 teachers through their paces on a massive four-square court he has constructed on the floor using masking tape. "Before it's over, I'll have shown them maybe 15 to 20 games they could play using that four square," says Mr. Doyle, whose workshop will cover a variety of tag-type games, such as one called switch, and numerous variations on ball tag using the basic four-square court. Another popular playground game at these sessions is alphabet hopscotch, which uses a large chess-type configuration of squares, many of them lettered, to incorporate spelling into an outdoor hopping game. "It's great to watch the teachers, because you'll start taking them through the rules of these old games and they'll say, 'Oh yeah, I remember that,' " Mr. Doyle says. "They all have so much fun just playing these games again." |