Studies have shown that an average ten year old spends eight hours in front of a screen per day. While technology and other factors draw children indoors, conscious effort towards opening the door and stepping out is critical.

Physical outdoor activity and connecting with nature are important to good health, well-being and a child’s intellectual capacity. Research shows that participation in outdoor activities in parks, backyards, gardens, and forests can increase self-esteem, decrease symptoms associated with ADHD, contribute to emotional growth and combat childhood obesity.

Author, Richard Louv, coined the term ‘Nature Deficit Disorder’ not for medical diagnosis but because it is clear and understandable. Consider for a moment the simple comparison of a child sitting on the couch with a gaming device in hand… not a lot of physical movement other than the child’s thumbs manipulating the controller; all mental focus on an artificial electronic figure battling or racing. Now consider a child walking down a park trail moving legs, arms, body with the mind focusing on trees, flowers, water, mushrooms, moss, and rocks.

One of the most rewarding experiences for the YMCA staff in Northfield is taking children into nature. Which includes: long hikes where children who may be bordering on obesity find success and pride in physical activity. During unstructured play near water children use their imaginations and you sometimes see them creating rock homes filled with water for fish they imagined they caught themselves.

Imagination is not used in video games and technology. Imagination plays a key role in problem-solving for children as they learn and grow and thrive. Time spent outdoors is magical and does wonders for children who need hands-on experiences. Children who would typically get into trouble indoors play successfully with other kids outdoors and become friendlier.

Suggestive of the ‘No Child Left Behind Act’, our government is processing a vital initiative entitled, ‘Leave No Child Inside’ because countless studies have shown that children need nature. The initiative abides by the Children’s Outdoor Bill of Rights, which declares that every child should have the opportunity to: discover wilderness – prairies, dunes, forests, savannas, and wetlands, camp under the stars, follow a trail, catch and release fish, frogs, and insects, climb a tree, explore nature in neighborhoods and cities, celebrate heritage, plant a flower, play in the mud or a stream, and learn to swim.

Remembering back to childhood experiences in the outdoors, do you see a difference in the way children today are encountering nature? Children used to travel up to a mile away from home to engage in spontaneous play while today kids travel only an average of 500 feet. Our community is blessed with access to the outdoors in and around Northfield. Putting down the “screens” isn’t easy, but the Y encourages you to sit down ~today~ and make a list with your child or your grandchild of places you can both go to explore nature and then make it happen!

The Northfield Area Family YMCA has just mailed out 1500 Summer Camp 2012 brochures to families in the community with children under the age of 11. If you have not receive your Y camp brochure please call 507.645.0088 – and we will mail one out to you or you can see the brochure online here: http://northfieldymca.org/wp-content/uploads/YMCA-SummerCamp-2012.pdf

 FOR

 NORTHFIELD PATCH’S PERSON OF THE YEAR (2011)

http://northfield.patch.com/articles/poll-vote-for-northfield-s-patch-s-person-of-the-year

Craig Swenson, Northfield YMCA’s Wellness Lead and Group Exercise Instructor was nominated for Northfield Patch’s Person of the Year.  This distinction recognizes those that have done some good in Northfield.  Over the last few weeks Northfieldpatch.com had readers submit names of people they feel deserve this honor. Northfield Patch received 10 nominations, which you’ll find in the attached poll and Craig Swenson was one of the 10 nominated. 

September is National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month, and the Northfield Area Family YMCA is reminding parents about the importance of incorporating regular physical activity and healthier eating habits into their children’s lives.   Read more

• Wellness Center (fitness) staff:  6-10 hours per week
• Child Watch (babysitting) staff:  15 hours per week
• Coaches & Instructors:  3-5 hours per week

For further details and how to apply, visit the YMCA Jobs Page.

HealthFinders July 7 2011 newsletter

I’ve been in Northfield going on four years, and an ongoing question I’ve heard repeatedly surrounds whether we truly are good at partnering.

Definitely, there’s a lot of talk about partnering, collaborating and sharing resources, and there are good examples of exactly that. I wonder that if we were graded as a community, though, would we get an “A”?

Northfield is rich in nonprofits and businesses and government entities and groups. How well do we truly work together to meet community needs? Is the general feeling one of “let’s dig in and get this done together?”

The YMCA has been a part of my life for a long time and I’ve worked in a variety of communities over the years. I have spent most my adult life as a single parent, though my children are now grown and I’m a grandma. I also spent time in the military and put myself through school (my background is in economics). My personal experience has put me on both sides of community need (receiving and providing). I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly, forgive the quote. At my core, I’m a collaborator. It simply doesn’t make sense to work in a silo. But instead, I continually look for ways to share resources and talents, reduce duplication, ensure programs are affordable and available and work together whenever possible. It just makes good economic sense.

It sounds like a simple recipe. But those of you in the trenches — working to support the kids, adults and families and all those in our community with needs — know it’s not always that easy. But shouldn’t it be? I spent a little time looking through the Rice County Health Rankings (2010), the City’s Community Survey (March 11), the 2010 Minnesota Student Survey (Northfield’s student information), the Center for Disease Control’s website and some slides I got from a friend surrounding “The Synergistic Effects of Obesity and Cardiovascular Disease.”

We have some work to do. Granted, there are some amazing things happening in Northfield. I only need to look at all the good work the Healthy Community Initiative is doing and I’m wildly impressed. I’m sure there are pockets of wonderful things happening all over Northfield. But, that doesn’t change the statistics in these reports and it doesn’t change the question that has been persistent for me: “Are we good at partnering?”

What can we do together to tackle a few of the excerpts from these reports:
• Rice County’s diabetes rates are higher than the state average.
• We have less access — that includes access, location and affordability for all ages — than the state average to fitness and recreation facilities. We are 70 percent lower than the national average.
• One-third of us are obese (a term I detest), and two-thirds of us are overweight.
• Only 22 percent of us have access to healthy food.
• Thirty-four to 48 percent of our sixth-graders (23 to 34 percent of 12th graders) do not participate in school sports teams, 29 to 33 percent of our sixth-graders (35 to 51 percent of 12th graders) do not participate in club or community sports teams.
• Forty-eight to 51 percent of these sixth-graders (59 to 73 percent of 12th graders) indicate the reason they don’t participate in school-based or community-based activities is because they are “too busy with other things.”

I find these sorts of statistics interesting when the Center for Disease Control indicates kids are spending an average of 6-10 hours per day in “screen time” (TV, videos, games, Internet, etc.). Add the number of families we have with one parent active military overseas and that 23 percent of us are single parents and 10 percent of our kids live in the poverty level, we have some further partnering to do.

All this data points to challenging problems that will require even greater partnership and coordination. The Northfield YMCA already partners with more than 30 programs and organizations. Collaboration is a key element of our organizational DNA, The Y’s and our partners’ combined volunteers and program participants will continue to be a catalyst for increasing the ways in which we work together, making Northfield a better, healthier place.

— Virginia Kaczmarek is executive director of the Northfield Area Family YMCA.

http://www.northfieldnews.com/content/international-affairs-come-life-northfield-youth

The month-long course during January involved 24 total hours of in-class learning in addition to 32 total hours of service-learning activities through local nonprofits. Based on their interests, students chose from Northfield YMCA, Faribault Early Childhood and Family Education, Growing Up Healthy, the Middle School Youth Center, Laura Baker Services, and ARTech School.

“The course is meant to be a hybrid, multifaceted way of learning,” Gross says. “It’s not just the research you do in the library — it’s connecting that research with a personal, relevant experience. Both parts are really important, and they inform each other.”

Erin Nordstrand ’12 was placed at the Northfield Middle School Youth Center to develop an after-school curriculum for middle school students. Nordstrand, along with two of her classmates, implemented and led the programs, ultimately assessing them based on their effectiveness in engaging the students.

Excited for school
“I hoped to prepare a curriculum that got kids excited about coming to school every day and made them feel an integral part of their school’s community,” Nordstrand says. “One of my goals was to get students more involved in after-school activities. If we helped prevent kids from going home to their typical TV routine, I would check off this project as a successful endeavor.”

The class demanded creative energy from the St. Olaf students. “One day we played dodgeball and the next was a cooking class, so it was an interesting challenge to continuously innovate better, more exciting activities,” Nordstrand says.

Another student in Gross’ class, Kirsten Petersen ’11, was a project mentor for ARTech seniors and saw the site experience as an opportunity to better understand her own vocation and career options. “I am considering becoming a teacher or school counselor someday, so it was helpful to get a better picture from the inside about how a school is run, the expectations for students, and the roles of teachers,” Petersen says.

In addition to achieving personal goals and considering career options, Gross hoped the students developed greater interest in the neighborhood. “I hoped that the students learned more about their community, that they understood where it is that they’re going to school. Before this class, they might not even have known these places existed.”

Community engagement is the core value at the heart of this kind of learning. Jacobi attests to the importance of community service through courses such as Gross’. “Students are often motivated to serve others, so they are motivated by opportunities to apply what they are learning in collaboration with community organizations,” Jacobi says. “Academic civic engagement also fosters in students the skills, knowledge and habits of mind that will serve them in future civic and work roles.”