Michael C. Gieck,
Children's Power Play!
Campaign Project Coordinator
E-mail:
mgieck@ucsd.edu
Phone:
619.681.0659
Fax: 619.681.0666
Larissa Johnson,
Community Youth Organization Specialist
E-mail:
lrjohnso@ucsd.edu
Phone:
619.681.0676
Fax: 619.681.0666
Address:
UCSD Community Pediatrics
4305 University Ave.
Suite 590
San Diego, CA 92105 |
Fitness Fiesta
This year, the Children’s Power Play! Program joined forces with the Network for a Healthy California’s
Physical Activity Integration program and the Children’s Initiative for the first ever Fitness Fiesta
Forum.
“Fitness Fiesta” was the theme for the Children’s Initiative's seventeenth biannual Touching Minds,
Shaping Futures' conference because for the first time in history, children's life spans may be shorter
than their parents. With one-fourth of children overweight in San Diego County and obesity rates even
higher in some low-income communities, innovative solutions are needed to change the tide of this burgeoning
health crisis. In response, the Fitness Fiesta provided after school providers, health educators, and
community volunteers with INNOVATIVE, FUN ways to integrate physical activity into their programs.
Sports4Kids, a nonprofit organization that brings safe and healthy play back to the school day led over
300 participants who attended the event in easy, noncompetitive ways to increase their student’s physical
activity such as “Triangle Tag” where three people stand around a cone and someone stands outside of the
group and has to tag the person opposite of them. The triangle works together to ensure the shape is
maintained throughout the game and no one is tagged.
“There are 1440 minutes in a day, how hard is it to schedule at least 30 of them for physical activity?”
Larissa Johnson, the Physical Activity Coordinator for the Network for a Healthy California and the keynote
speaker stated that the main goal of the Fitness Fiesta Forum was to increase community involvement in
physical activity, while making it 100% fun. After school providers influence their student’s health,
including nutrition, physical activity and weight. The Fitness Fiesta taught providers ways to get their
students more physically active which increases energy levels and concentration. A circuit training area
was created to show the importance of interval training for youth by providing quick ways to incorporate
physical activity into any community program some examples are creating a jump rope station, a squat
station or a hula hoop station that youth can cycle through after they finish their homework.
The Network for a Healthy California also provided a workshop entitled “Physical Activity Arts and Crafts”
where participants learned to make their own jump ropes out of basic rope and beads; Frisbees out of pie
tins; and table tennis sets out of cardboard, duct tape and rubber band balls.
The "Fitness Fiesta Forum" showed health educators, after school providers, community how to pay it, or this
case, “move it” forward. Children who participate in school and community programs can look forward to
having fun and being active…100% of the time.
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