New research from Statistics Canada’s Canadian Health Measures Survey reaffirmed the dramatic decline in Canadian children’s fitness seen over the past 35 years with only a third of Canadian school-aged children meeting physical activity guidelines. Other research from the same survey showed that physical activity increases when children are outdoors, with each additional hour spent...
Make sure your voice is heard. Ontario Parks is halfway through the Healthy Parks Healthy People consultation period. The time to submit your feedback on nature and health is now! We know nature is a valuable tool for producing positive health outcomes. Ontario Parks is ready to take action, but they need your help first. They...
A comprehensive new report from UNICEF Canada asked children how their lives are going. The results show that Canada is a tough place to grow up. Only 55 per cent of children in Canada report a high level of life satisfaction, with 27 per cent feeling sad or hopeless for long periods of time and 1 in 3...
Have you ever wondered how much daily weather conditions can actually impact physical activity levels in children and on which days of the week the impact is more prominent? To date, there is strong evidence that moderate-to-vigorous physical activity is associated with many health benefits in childhood. In Canada, insufficient physical activity in children remains...
Play Outside NS shares a common goal of promoting, facilitating and communicating the importance of outdoor play in the early years, to foster health and well-being. In July and August 2019, they hosted “Summer to PLEY” (Physical Literacy in the Early Years), a series of knowledge sharing events showcasing work from the PLEY project. They...
Outdoor play is increasingly recognized as a foundation for children’s healthy social, cognitive, emotional and physical development. As such, outdoor play has now been added to the Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development, where experts have weighed in on 9 outdoor play related topics from play-based learning to designing cities to support outdoor play. The chapter recognizes the...
The Lawson Foundation is a National family foundation which focuses on the healthy development of children and youth. One of their major goals is to support children’s access and opportunity to connect and play in nature. In October 2018, the Lawson Foundation brought together 125 experts and leaders from various sectors at the Outdoor Play and Early...
The Canadian Public Health Association recently released a toolkit composed of infographics, research summaries, decision-making tools, promising practices, and a discussion document. The toolkit provides excellent resources and information on the importance of unstructured play, how to develop policy to facilitate play within schools and communities, and current research in the field of risky play....
Nature Canada, a national charitable organization has released a report titled Screen Time vs. Green Time” The Health Impacts of too much Screen Time exposing the negative impacts of screen time on Canadian children and providing suggestions to guide children away from screens, and towards nature. Report highlights and findings In an article summarizing the Screen Time vs. Green...
As we continue to understand the benefits of outdoor active play, and the consequences of screen time, research is expanding to explore the influence of outdoor play and screen time on specific areas of children’s health and development. A recently published study in PLOS ONE titled “Cross sectional associations of screen time and outdoor play with social skills in...
