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Teaching Sports or Athletic Skills: The Importance of Early Physical Education
Like never before in American history, teaching sports
or athletic skills to children is of vital importance. Children today are
blessed with enough television, music, movies, videogames, and other passive
forms of entertainment that they neglect the healthy virtues of exercise and
play. Sedimentary habits in a child can create an unhealthy adult – but the
teaching of sports or athletic skills such as tumbling or gymnastics can
correct this.
In March 2004, the Center for Disease Control released
a study titled, “Obesity in Young
Children: Impact and Intervention.” In this, childhood obesity was
diagnosed as an epidemic, showing that nearly 9 million American youths aged
6-19 were overweight. The conclusion reached in the study was that school
physical education programs helped to keep children from becoming overweight.
It goes on to say that all school children from kindergarten through to twelfth
grade should have one hour of PE a day.
This, of course, is not what is happening now. With
school budgets being tightened, the teaching of sports or athletic skills to
children is considered superfluous. This is sadly ironic, as math and reading
scores for overweight children on the whole are lower than for non-overweight
children.
At The Little Gym®, there are classes in tumbling and
gymnastics that progress at the child’s level, so that they learn to achieve
physically without being pressured to do so. Similarly, The Little Gym®’s
karate program is strictly non-contact, non-competitive and includes
gymnastics. The program is low stress and loaded with music and laughter.
The Little Gym® not only provides for a safe place for
children to be active, or for the very young to develop motor but also teaches
habits that will help your child grow into an active adult, able to learn in
school with greater ease, and fill them with the confidence and social skills
required to succeed in life.
For more about these
programs teaching sports or athletic skills, visit The Little Gym®
today.
 Find The Little Gym near you
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