Michelle Carter gives tips for keeping children active & healthy during Covid-19 | Homeroom with Sal
Hello, welcome to the daily homeroom. Sal Khan here from Khan Academy. For those of you, for those of you, uh, that this is the first time you're joining, this is something that we're doing on a daily basis so that we all feel connected in this time of school closures and social distancing.
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So today we have a very exciting guest. We, uh, yesterday we talked about mental health and today we're going to talk a little bit about physical health. And I think we all have a sense, you know, we have those daily schedules where we said, hey, this is where you can work on math on Khan Academy, this week you could work on English and language arts, but we had breaks in there and we kind of threw in, hey, you could do yoga now or you could go for a run. But today we have an expert, Michelle Carter from Shape America.
So Michelle, before the COVID crisis, what were you doing? Or what are you doing?
"Well, that's a great question. I think we've all been kind of, uh, sidetracked with this COVID-19. But Shape America is a non-profit association for health and PE teachers. We serve as the voice of kids. Let me check with Felipe, are you all hearing Michelle? Because I can't hear. Is it only me? Oh, okay, so here's her. So maybe something's wrong with my—Michelle, keep talking."
"Okay, I'm here. I just, like, can you hear me now?"
"Yeah, hear you. Can you hear me now?"
"Okay, so, um, as I was saying, Shape America serves as the voice of over 200,000 health and PE teachers. We're dedicated to helping health education teachers and physical education teachers with what they need to teach students how to live their best life physically and emotionally. I'm a former health and PE teacher, and so I really serve as a subject matter and content expert for Shape America."
"Okay, so, um, one of the things that's really important when you are thinking about creating physical activity experiences for your children is that you want to accumulate about 60 minutes of daily physical activity for school-aged children around ages 6 to 17 years old. And this is recommendations that come from CDC. And for preschool-aged children, thinking about three to five years old, there isn't a set time, but, um, just making sure that they're getting physical activity throughout the day.
So some specific examples of the kinds of things that you can do with your younger children are using things around your house. It doesn't have to be elaborate, doesn't have to, um, even take a lot of time, as long as you're just providing that opportunity for your children to move. And one example is using things like paper plates, or if you have pillows, or even a hand towel, something flat. You can spread that around, um, an area and have them jump from rock to rock. This works on the skills of balance, locomotor, and leaping.
And then if you're able to go outside, you could use sidewalk chalk and draw circles and have them leaping. Um, really at the early childhood age, around three to five, uh, imaginative movement is really good for young children, um, having them move their bodies in different ways. So asking them, can you make your body like a circle? Can you make your body like a triangle or the letter S? And so getting them to be creative while they're moving their body and exploring how their body moves in different ways.
I know we probably—the go-to exercise of movement is walking, and it's really good even for little ones. But specifically for little ones, having them practice those locomotor movements again, as well as galloping, and skipping, and hopping. They can do that along the sidewalk. Um, so just thinking about ways that they can move while walking in your house or even outside. You can ask them to touch three things that are green, touch one thing that is red. So just having them, you're working on colors, and then following directions, and they're moving at the same time. So very simple things. And then of course, one that is easy to do is with music and using music as a great tool.
So playing different types of music with fast tempos or slower tempos, and asking them, well, how can you move your body to the beat of this song? So if they're moving fast, they can get kind of upbeat, or if they're slow and they move their bodies slow. Classical music is a great opportunity to use because the variations in the tempo or if there's loud drums or clashing cymbals.
And so we have a lot of resources at ShapeAmerica.org, especially on our early childhood calendars that are really great. We have tons of resources there with a plethora of ideas for our little—our young friends, our young children. Um, so specifically going back to school-aged children, that's categorized as six to 17 year old children, and so really making sure they get an hour of moderate to vigorous physical activity throughout the day. So that means their heart rate is up, they're breathing harder, and if they did it long enough, they'd get sweaty."
"Hi! Hi! So I apologize everyone, we have a little bit of technical difficulties, so I'll be stepping in until Sal gets set up with questions from—"
"No problem!"
"Yeah, so I think we have a couple of good questions that are already coming in. All right, we have a really good question from Facebook, Michelle. It's from Scott Yang, and the question is, 'Michelle, what do you do if you live in a tiny home? How do you exercise inside a tiny space?'"
"Absolutely! So, um, you don't need a lot of space necessarily, but this is where creativity comes in really great. So one thing that, using the things that you already have in your house. So one example is if you have Candy Land or another card game or Monopoly or something like that, you can use the cards from that game and assign exercises to the colors or the suits or the character. And then, so for example, in Candy Land, if you draw a blue color, you can do, um, running in place for 20 seconds or something like that.
And one thing you'll hear me talk about a lot, um, through this is allowing your children to have choice. That's really important. So ask them, what do you want to—what should we do? If we pick blue, what should we do? If we pick red? So getting them involved and I'm coming up with the rules of the game."
"Hi Sal!"
"Hey Michelle, I can finally hear you! So apologies. Good. But, but, uh, Felipe did some heroic back-end rewiring of everything. It looks like we're all good and thanks Dan for being able to step in, and Dan's always in the background helping us, so I should always be thanking him. Uh, and I—I—it sounds like y'all already got started, and I think I got a sense of, of, of where y'all are. I guess maybe one way to think about it is what is, and maybe you just said this, so I'm, I'm late to this party; what a target amount of physical activity that you would like children to be getting, maybe of different ages?"
"Yes, so, um, for that school-age group, um, six to 17 years old, they're about an hour of 60 minutes of physical activity. And so we're saying moderate to vigorous, um, so they're breathing harder, heart rate is up, and if they were to do this activity long enough, you know, they'd start working up a sweat. For younger children, that's preschool age, there isn't necessarily a set time but just providing opportunities for physical activity and movement and imaginative movement throughout the day so that they can explore how their body moves."
"Yeah, and for those younger crowd, it's almost hard to stop them from moving."
"Yeah, I once, for kicks, put a step tracker on my five-year-old and saw what happened, and he has a lot of stuff to this day! But that’s interesting, it's kind of more— a little more rigorous. A walk is nice but, uh, if you can maybe work up a sweat dancing, yoga, running, some type of, you know, shooting hoops, you know, socially distant just with your family, I guess stuff like that."
"So walking is a great—is a great exercise, and you can make walking, um, more intense too by speeding up, um, your pace or looking to go up hills, even adding in skipping, um, and things like that to make it a little bit more challenging. So walking is—I know it's kind of a go-to thing because it's easy to do and it is very effective. So walking is great.
You can even throw in other things with other movements like lunges or squats and things like that just to ramp it up a little bit too."
"And what do you think about pacing? Is it, uh, an hour all at once or do you imagine it being three 20-minute sessions over the course of the day?"
"So I think breaking it up is the best. We kind of don't want to just get our bout of physical activity in one time and then be sedentary the rest of the day. So one of our recommendations is to is getting, um, is creating a recess time. I know you all have been talking a lot, and we've all been talking about the importance of creating these routines. So again, creating this routine of if you know you have lunch around 12 or 12:30, schedule in that 20 to 30 minutes of dedicated physical activity time before lunch.
That’s really beneficial because what it does too was before lunch, they're getting that energy out, they come and they're ready to eat. They're going to be more likely to eat those vegetables and those fruits, those healthy foods that you're putting in front of them, and, um, it also serves as like a cool-down period, um, so that after lunch, if you're ready to get back into the learning aspect into academics, they're settled and they're focused and ready to learn."
"That's super helpful, and I—and my sense of it is not only is it important for the physical activity component, but that blood flowing throughout the whole body is actually useful for the learning itself. So that’s why it's good to go absolutely back and forth."
"So we're getting a ton of questions on social media—"
"No, no, I'm ready for questions!"
"Okay, okay! So let's see, there's a couple of from YouTube. Ashutosh asks, 'Hi Sal, how can someone keep a teen doing physical activities who cannot go outside because of living in a congested urban area and they like coding?' I don't know if those are the same but someone who lives in a—you live in New York in a, you know, dense environment, might not be a green space outside, green space or maybe safety issues or something, just not access."
"Definitely. That's a great question. So one, one thing that is very important, and this opportunity that comes with this crisis is that allowing students to take ownership of their health and allowing them for choice. So if they can create their own schedules and decide how they want to move and allow some creativity, I think that's really important for them to do, to choose things that are exciting for them and that they like to do, um, to create their own movement.
And so we have a few resources, um, especially within our take-home packet that kind of guides them through that. So like with a physical activity log, um, some guidance on how to create some of these things. We have these movement calendars like our mind and body calendar that they can follow along with, um, and different types of exercises like that online too. If they're into coding, and I know we always stress about, you know, screen time, but if they're using the screen time to find different types of ways to be active, I know there's lots of websites. I'll just fitness blender is one where they can create their own, they can kind of tailor it to what they want to do.
So creating goals and so we can get into goal setting with that, um, and allowing them to take ownership because we really want to set the stage for them to be able to keep this as they're, they're entering into adulthood and see the value in it."
"Awesome. A lot more questions, this one from Xiao Luo on Facebook, uh, this is just interesting. My daughter is asking if a thousand jump ropes is enough exercise for a day for a 14-year-old."
"That sounds pretty intense!"
"That does sound pretty intense and a very specific. So I think it would be more about, um, the time spent. If it took you 30 minutes to do a thousand jump ropes, you'd want to look at, okay, that's—I got half of my activity in and so what are other ways can I get movement in?
Um, it's good for all of us, you know, children especially to, you know, try not to be sitting for too long in one sitting so that's really good, a thousand jump ropes. But if you could also find other opportunities to get up and even just for a few minutes, I mean, um, take a quick break. If you have stairs in your house or in your apartment building, you know, walking up and down the stairs for a couple of minutes, um, challenge yourself in those ways. Those are great ways to to continue to add to that minutes. You really want to get those 60 minutes if you can in a day."
"Yeah, no, but it sounds like Xiao, you have a pretty hardcore daughter but, yeah, she could keep going, you know?"
"Yeah! Yeah, just keep going! A thousand, a thousand is really good. That's good. I've tried—I used to be into jump rope. It might not be physically obvious, but a thousand! Yeah! I mean because if you're doing it fast with the fast rope, you can, you're going about two per second, so it's about, you know, right about five ten minutes. But it's a good example of if you have a jump rope at home, you can use the jump rope to get your heart rate up and it doesn't take a lot of space. You could also use it to help stretch or use it to create balancing and different exercises with a jump rope too!"
"So the other question, so this is an interesting—I think a lot of people are having this question. Generally, this is from Sohom Sanu on Facebook: 'Is running or walking on trails outside safe during the coronavirus?'"
"So from my understanding of what I've read on the CDC guidelines, it is safe to be outside, um, as long as you're not coming into that within that six feet of someone else. So it's still okay to take your children outside, um, you just don't, you know, it's not as safe to have them playing with other children or that close contact, but certainly go outside with them.
We did a chalk-your-walk challenge on social media that was really fun. So letting them still get outside and thinking about those ways that they can move. I mean even if it's in your driveway or if there's a sidewalk, um, draw big squiggle lines on the floor and have them try balancing and moving in those pathways, use the music as a really good opportunity if you can play music and have them move to the music.
Another thing is that we're, as adults, we're a little bit further removed from physical education class, so ask them, um, what do you do in class and what are some things that you think you can teach us to do that you've learned in your health and PE classes to get us moving. Um, and kids are so creative that they'll come up with that! But I encourage people if they can, you know, take them outside and still use those trails, just be mindful about how much they're being used and then also follow your state, um, if you have a stay-at-home order and making sure you look into if, if you can go outside and use those public facilities."
"Yeah, I know personally, you know, if not for outside, I think a lot of us would find this even that much more difficult. You know, in my neighborhood, I'm seeing a lot of people going for walks and runs. We have a nice park locally, we have some trails not too far away and it's really just about keeping that that distance. Uh, you know, it's almost funny—in our neighborhood you can walk and people just part, you know, far more than six feet. Uh, but I think that's, it's always—it's always good to be prudent. So let's see, this is, I guess it's more of a Khan Academy question, although maybe we might work together on this, Michelle.
From Camilla on YouTube: 'Any plans of having PE health on Khan Academy? I felt like people in school lacking only ever played football, so I'm learning how to be active and healthy in ways I enjoy.'"
"You know, I—I that's definitely an interesting idea. But in the meantime, there's a lot of stuff obviously on the internet, on YouTube, on Shape America's website, uh, you know, I've— in our schedules I put some of my favorite activities that you can find on YouTube like some of these dancing things where you have to, you know, just dance or dance-dance revolution, that type of stuff, yoga. There’s a lot of, I mean, there's unlimited stuff on YouTube you could find. But it is interesting if we did something as well, right?"
"And so I do want to make a distinction, that was a great question, Camilla, for a little plug here for Shape America, is just that distinguishing between physical activity and physical education. So physical activity is just movement and any kind of movement where you're expending energy. But physical education is really important and especially health education. And I think we can really see it in this moment is that where there's standards and objectives that go along with actual learning and physical education.
So, um, I've heard a lot of stories of—I’ll give you an example of—um, people who were athletes in school and their coaches were telling them what to do, but as soon as they lost that coach, they were no longer involved in that sport—they no longer—they found themselves—they didn’t know how to actually take that; what I keep talking about that ownership of how to take care of their health and their wellness. And so with health and physical education, it's teaching them those skills so that when they do enter into adulthood, they know how to be physically active, they have the skills so that they can be physically active for a lifetime.
They do have the skills to take care of their mental and emotional health as well. And so we see it's very important right now because we're at home and so we're finding challenges of being physically active. We're also finding challenges of taking care of our emotional and our mental well-being as well. So, um, if you ever change your mind, Sal, Shape America is here to help you with that."
"No, we might be providing resources around that, and that's a really good distinction you made which is it's not—I mean, the physical activity is important, especially in this time, but it's that plus the knowledge, the frameworks, the self-agency, uh, that you can be—that can be taught in a traditional physical education or health class."
"Absolutely, absolutely! So let's see, someone from YouTube—actually, this isn't Facebook. Kim Randall asks, 'Can your ability to run while keeping oxygenated be compromised by wearing a mask as the current guideline suggests? I guess in some places they are recommending wearing a mask, right?'"
"Well, I'm not sure. You would probably want to consult with a doctor because yes, I—you know, wearing a mask can impede your breathing and it could make, um, labor your breathing. So I would probably, um, err on the side of caution with using a mask while doing something that's very strenuous and you're taking a lot of your breathing in and you're breathing harder and you need more oxygen.
Um, so walking with a mask is absolutely fine but if you're doing something like high-intensity interval training, um, you might want to do that somewhere where you don't need to do wear a mask."
"Yeah, I remember when there they had the fires here in California and the air quality wasn't so great, I was wearing one of those N95s and yeah, it is very hard to run with an N95 mask on!"
"Yes, definitely! You don't get a lot of air through. So this is an interesting question. It's both academic and from a physical education point of view. It's from YouTube. Sure, um, my non-traditional life, that's the username. Any advice for kids who are resisting following a schedule, doing any school work or exercise? I don't want to push too hard during this traumatic time, but my sibling has been resistant. So how do you convince—?"
"That is a—that's a great question! Um, so I kind of thought about that a little bit. Um, I think really when you think about ways where what's engaging to that person, what is that person like, this is a strategy in teaching as well too—is like getting that person to, um, choose and identify the things that they like and how can they use that to incorporate into physical activity and really identifying what some of the immediate benefits are with that. What's the benefit of being physically active?
So if they're complaining about, you know, I'm not sleeping well, well physical activity is a great way to promote sleep. Um, figure out some of those things of what they're going through. I'm feeling lonely or I'm just kind of down in the dumps about not being in school, and so those kinds of things physical activity, um, is a great way to kind of lift moods and spirits.
Um, and talking about that and that really—I mean part of if it's another—a teenager or something, you know, a young person who isn't an adult, it's like, well, we can't get too out of that routine. I mean, we're going to have to go back to it eventually. We're taking a, you know, a big pause in our life, but we want to stick with, um, sticking with the schedule. It'll make us feel better physically; it's going to make us feel better emotionally."
"That's great advice, and what I'm finding you know why my younger, my youngest who's five years old oftentimes if you ask to do something directly, he automatically resists; like take a bath he's like no! You know, let's go for a walk, he'll say no. But if you do a little bit of a deflection, maybe stroke his ego a little bit, say 'Hey, that was really amazing how you got that stuff done. Hey, can we talk about it now? I'm just going to be outside,' and as soon as they're outside then all sorts of good stuff."
"Yes! Yes, that's true! And yesterday, I remember even talking about that praise to point out the great things that that person has, those strengths and stuff like that! So yes, that's a great tip!"
"Yeah, I hate to admit it, but I think it works with me as well!"
"But it does! I—we had a running joke in my family where, you know, if I wanted to get my younger siblings to do something, all I had to do was say I'll time you! So my oldest is like that! You—ty— you measure it; he wants to do it! Uh, let’s see, challenge—it's a Facebook Lillian Carrera-Senko asks, 'What are your feelings about preschoolers incorporating yoga into their physical activity for the day?'"
"Um, I think it can be done well. It's a good—it's a good strategy of like stretching and kind of using what I mentioned earlier is about that imaginative movement. So, um, if you're talking about different things like cobra pose and talking about, 'Let's—we can be like cobras and snakes!' and getting into that position that way and kind of just picking ones that are are fun for them to do! Child's pose I think is a nice way to get them to move and then again asking them what are some different ways we can stretch our bodies together.
And so allowing them to really explore! Um, so with the little ones like preschool age, it's about them being able to explore the body movement, how their body moves in those kinds of ways. So yoga is a great way to kind of lead them into that and then asking them what other animals in nature can we move with?"
"That's great! And you know, yoga itself, my understanding is, was first developed thousands of years ago in India as a way of preparing the body for meditation, so there's an interesting aspect of it. So it's great to intersperse and especially in this time where, uh, people are just trying to get into a better mental place as well and not get too anxious that yoga not only is a physical but it can relax you and then I get you focused for other things."
"Let's see, so other—there's a lot of questions of here. For Sophie Foster on YouTube asks, 'What kind of foods would you eat to get more energized after doing more per—I guess in general—more energized?'"
"Um, that's a great, a great question! So carbohydrates are usually foods that fuel you. They are our body's number one source of energy. Um, so it kind of depends on what you're trying to do. If you know you're going to do something with, um, an extended period of time—so you know you're going to go for a more intense longer—you think about eating carbs, complex carbs more in the beginning of the day but really, you know, bananas and fruits those are really good healthy carbohydrates for you to eat that provide energy.
Eating, um, you can eat a banana after a workout or even before a workout. So you know, really fruits and vegetables are great ways to to get that energy in! Um, and so you'll find too as you become more active, it increases your metabolism, and so you might become more hungry and so just making sure you're eating those healthy—those healthy foods—um, to fuel you."
"Yeah, and our brains use a large portion of our calories too. That's why—"
"Absolutely!"
"There's a lot of energy there! People don't realize it. And the other good thing about fruits is the vitamin C, which obviously is valuable for fending off your—for fending off your horses!"
"Absolutely! So let's see, there's—there's Kim Randall from Facebook asks, 'What should we do instead if we can't run? Should we walk fast?'"
"Yeah, sometimes my knee gives me troubles, you know. There might be other reasons why someone can't run. What do you recommend?"
"Yeah, I think I—to me, walking is such a great, it's very effective; everybody can do it! Um, it's also, if you plan it throughout your day, it could be a great time to bond with family. And there's a lot of different things you can do to kind of make it a little more interesting.
Um, speaking again towards the younger children, name 10 things that start with the letter of your name that we see on our walk. Maybe you do one day a noticing walk where you're looking around for things you've never noticed before that maybe you've never paid attention and it kind of goes into that mindfulness piece, where you're practicing being in the moment and you're not thinking about what's going to happen or what has already happened.
And then you can add the challenge of let's not talk, and then at the end of our walk we can kind of like did you notice this and kind of compare. Um, one that I thought was good was the social distancing walks! So can, if you're friends with your neighbor, you know, hey, let's take a walk! You're on that side of the—on the other side, walk, we're on this one, and then we can shadow each other. So taking turns, kind of like a follow-the-leader type of game.
Um, and then, yeah! Changing the speed and tempo of your walk—those are simple ways to do it! You speed walk for a minute and then, you know, leisurely walk for 30 seconds or, you know, going up and down, and that helps burn more calories too if you can't do other more intense forms of exercise.
And I find walking especially valuable, and this is more advice for maybe the parents but the students as well; if you have a call—now that we're working remotely too—and you just walk while you do it, you don't even notice the time goes by and you all of a sudden you have like 5,000 steps or 6,000 steps!"
"So it looks like we're getting more and more questions! This is a very popular topic, but we're pretty much at time. My apologies both to you, Michelle, and everyone else for some of the difficulties I had on— I had on my end, uh, but thank you so much for joining! I—I suspect that we'll have more questions at future times to ask Michelle, so don't hesitate to keep those questions coming!
But I'll just thank everyone for joining once again! This is just a way for all of us to stay connected to support each other in what is a trying time! I'll remind everyone again we are not for profit, so your donations are very much appreciated! We're—we are running at a deficit, and, uh, a reminder for tomorrow's show, our guest, uh, is Bill Gates, and we're going to talk a little bit about—he's really—we know him for many things as a philanthropist as a founder of Microsoft, but he's really been one of the people who predicted this pandemic many years ago.
He's been giving speeches about it and he's been at the center of the battle, so we're going to talk a lot about epidemiology tomorrow and where all of this might lead. So thanks everyone for joining!"