Exercise is good for anyone, but especially for growing kids! However, if they recharge with juice boxes, cookies, chips and snack cakes, all that running and jumping end up useless.

It may be a good idea to keep children active through after-school programs, but not all after-school programs do well in providing enough exercise and nutrition teaching to children.

The Healthy Opportunities for Physical Activity and Nutrition After-School Project, or HOP’N), found many programs don’t provide enough exercise or adequate nutrition.  Researchers for HOP’N observed average after-school programs only provided 20 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity, falling short of the 60 minutes recommended, with a lot of kids just sitting around.

HOP’N suggests after-school programs include a healthy snack, sufficient physical activity, weekly nutrition and exercise education and staff training.

Plans are better done.  We just hope that HOP’N will hop into the implementation of these suggestions before after-school programs turn into babysitting centers.