Child, Play Outside!!!

10 Ways Playing Outside Will Make Your Kid Smarter

Today, the average American child spends as little as 30 minutes outside in unstructured play each day.

When I was a kid, I lived outside. Most warm evenings would have me and most of the neighborhood kids riding bikes, building forts, catching lightning bugs, or just laying in the grass until the streetlights blinked on or our mothers called us for dinner. I grew up in an age when organized athletics for five year olds were rare, when parents didn’t orchestrate their children’s every waking moment, when mothers and fathers didn’t feel so pressured for their kids to perform and succeed. There was an abundance of free time and my mother didn’t want me in her hair. I am a much better person for it.

Today, the average American child spends as little as 30 minutes outside in unstructured play each day. Let’s be honest, that’s not enough time to organize a game of stickball or terrorize the neighborhood in a bicycle gang or even to get lost in thought lying in the warm spring grass. What are our kids doing with their time? Most of it is spent indoors behind a desk or dazed behind an electronic screen. The average American child spends as much as seven hours using electronics every day.

It’s a sad fact that our kids would generally rather FaceTime with their friends than actually play with them.

But aside from “free time” spent on computers and tablets and cell phones, parents are overly concerned with artificially enriching their children’s lives. Organized sports, and dance classes, and math camps, and scouts are where parents want their kids to spend their “extra” time. By organizing and carefully constructing a childhood, they hope to give their kids a leg up in the human rat race.

It’s a common thought that if a child isn’t spending time in school achieving academic excellence, then they should be studying and completing worksheets, and if there is still time left over, they should be engaged in carefully coordinated activities designed to make them better, smarter, higher-achieving people. All of this is going to have to go down on college applications one day, so we might as well start now and make it look good.

But there is no “extra” time. Kids are like us, they only have time. There’s nothing extra, and too much is sucked up by living a script someone else has created for them. Kids need to write their own scripts, just like adults. They need freedom. And quite often, they need to be outside and engaged in free play to become whole human beings.

Parents, if you’re worried about your kid getting into Harvard (and if so, I argue that you might be worried about the wrong things, but that’s a subject for another blog post), you still might want them to back away from the worksheets and violin practice and just go outside. There are a number of ways that playing outside makes kids smarter.

1. Playing outside improves focus. A 2008 study from the University of Michigan explored the cognitive benefits of interacting with nature. The study found that just walking outside, no matter the weather, and no matter whether the experience was actually enjoyable, helped improve memory and attention by 20 percent. So even when they don’t want to put down the tablet, and they complain about being miserable, just send them outside anyway.

2. Playing outside stimulates creativity. During open-ended play, kids have to make up ways to entertain themselves instead of relying on adults to do it for them. Being outdoors where there are rocks and dirt and sticks presents limitless opportunities for play experiences. No two playtimes will end up looking exactly the same. Being outside presents a plethora of opportunities for imaginative play, creative building, and inventive activities.

3. Playing outside promotes problem solving. During free outdoor play, children make up their own rules. They learn what works and what doesn’t. They learn when to keep trying and when to try something else. If playing with other children, they learn what types of interactions promote cooperation and which cause frustration. By solving their own childhood problems, they’ll be much more independent problem solvers as adults. Practice makes perfect in this area of life. If never given the chance to practice solving their own problems, how can we expect them to magically do it once they turn eighteen?

4. Playing outside develops leadership skills. Playing together outside, children must negotiate rules of games and the roles they play in them. Natural leadership skills will be developed as they play. No special workshops or lessons required.
5. Playing outside improves language skills. Children are so often told that they must be quiet indoors. “Use your quiet, indoor voice,” we often hear teachers tell their young pupils. But outside, children are free to be loud. Instead of others encouraging them to hush, they can experience a freedom to speak that the indoors doesn’t always provide. Many children (especially boys) are able to find their voices outdoors. And cooperative play, gives plenty of opportunities to communicate with one another. Children may issue instructions to each other on the building of a fort or the intricate rules of a spontaneous game.

Being outdoors always creates a lush context for vocabulary development, too. From discovering tiny animals, to expressing changing weather and seasons, to describing the texture rich environment of trees and stones, children are encouraged by the outdoors to try out new words and make them their own.

6. Playing outside is multi-sensory. During outdoor play, a child uses all of his senses: touch, sight, hearing, smell, and even taste (If I had a dollar for every time I told a child, “Don’t put that in your mouth!”). Not all children learn the same way. By opening up experiences to all of a child’s senses, we help each child learn in their own unique way.

7. Playing outside relieves stress. It’s no secret that today’s kids are stressed out. As many as one in eight children and 20 percent of teens suffer from severe anxiety disorders. Modern children face pressure to perform from their parents, their teachers, and their schools. Children and their parents start thinking about colleges as early as kindergarten, and school systems place a huge emphasis on student test scores. It’s no wonder our children feel stressed out. But more than 100 research studies have shown that time spent outdoors reduces stress, anxiety, and depression. The cure for childhood depression and anxiety is literally waiting right outside our door. And a relaxed and unworried person makes a better learner.

8. Playing outside makes children healthier. You might not think that healthier equals smarter, but sick kids miss school and can easily fall behind. Besides, learning is more difficult when you don’t feel well. Spending time outdoors strengthens immune systems, making children healthier and less prone to catching common illnesses, and therefore less likely to miss school.

9. Playing outside encourages physical activity. Outside, children are free to run and jump and climb. There are opportunities to be physically active that just aren’t available in most indoor environments. There is a growing body of research that shows how physical activity positively affects brain health. Here are just a few:

  • A 2007 study from Columbia University discovered that regular exercise increased blood flow by 30 percent to the part of the brain responsible for memory and learning.
  • Psychologists at the University of of Illinois found that physically fit children scored better in a series of cognitive challenges.
  • A 2007 German study discovered that after exercise, people learned vocabulary words 20 percent faster than before they exercised.
  • A Swedish study showed that cardiovascular fitness is associated with cognition in young adulthood. The researchers hypothesize that aerobic activity produces specific growth factors and proteins that stimulate the brain.

10. Playing outside is fun. Learning is easier and longer lasting when it is fun. Being outdoors riding bikes with friends, organizing neighborhood “army” battles, and rushing to home base in impromptu games of tag are just plain fun. Those are the experiences that will stick with kids long after they’ve grown up and moved on to the “real world”.

So if you want your kid to get into Harvard, you might just want them to step away from the homework and just go outside and play. They’ll be smart for it… and certainly happier, too.

Featured image from: Source

from:    http://themindunleashed.org/2016/04/10-ways-playing-outside-will-make-your-kid-smarter.html

What is Going On ?

Survival Weekend: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

by Elle

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Daisy Luther
Contributor, ZenGardner.com

Today on Survival Saturday, we have a series of stories that could  all be headlined, “What could possibly go wrong?” Do you remember the reality show by that name, where a couple of guys apply science and logic to ill-conceived ideas and explain exactly what could go wrong when you power  a skateboard with homemade rockets? Perhaps our future doom won’t be caused by some kind of epic disaster, but by the unwillingness of the people to actually accept reality and apply logic to it.

Survival Saturday is  a round-up of the week’s news and resources for folks who are interested in being prepared.

This Week in the News…

Coming to a City Near You: Aerial Spraying of GMO Bacteria over Residential Neighborhoods

Since regular pesticide isn’t bad enough, the officials of Seattle, Washington have taken things one step further: they’re going to douse the city in a genetically modified bacteria in an experimental attempt to eradicate gypsy moths. What could possibly go wrong with that one? (Well, for one thing, the story about the Zika virus originating in the area of South America where GMO mosquitos were released comes to mind.)

If you ever wondered whether you might possibly be an unwilling participant in a science experiment, I think it’s pretty safe to assume that you are.

The Washington Department of Health has recommended that people stay indoors for half an hour after the spray. (They don’t mention anything about sealing doors and windows with duct tape or closing vents to the outside, but hey, maybe that’s just me.)  Of course, the USDA, always a proponent of things GMO and unnatural, says everything will be just fine, claiming that “the acidic diet of most Americans renders the bacteria harmless, though it is persistent in produce and food products.” Apparently, this GMO bacteria pesticide has been sprayed on our food for a while now, although I must have missed the announcement of that practice.

Speaking of pesticides, if you’re trying to avoid them check out this newly-released list of the fruits and vegetable with the highest pesticide residue this year. Grab a kleenex, because the things that must now be purchased organically will make you weep.

Reality Is Mean

Let me preface by saying that this little rant does not reflect my opinions on who can use which bathroom. Honestly, I don’t care. There are stall doors. Don’t even get me started on pondering how bathroom laws would be enforced or how it isn’t the government’s place to be potty monitors. We have bigger problems in this country than who pees where and you’d be wise not to get sidetracked by that ridiculous debate.

Okay – back to the story.

I’ll never forget when my kiddo was in 4th grade. She was telling me about an event that happened in school and being very vague in her description of the girl involved. Finally, it dawned on me. I asked her, “Are you talking about the girl in your class who is black?”  Since there was only one child in the class of African American descent, that did indeed narrow it down. But my daughter was horrified because the kids had been taught never to refer to a person’s race, even when it was the most accurate descriptor.  If I thought that was absolutely ridiculous, I had no idea at the time what was coming down the pipe of political correctness.

Well, here it is. And what has come out of the pipe is the pure sewage of cognitive dissonance.

What could possibly go wrong in a society that politely accepts fantasy as fact? It seems pretty obvious to me that college students are being prepped for the world Orwell had imagined.

Here’s What’s Going on Behind the Pending Economic Disaster

I sent out an extra email last week because I stumbled upon a series of events that made me wonder if the economic collapse is truly upon us. The Fed (which isn’t at all federal, but that’s another story – and one you really should read) has issued warnings to 3 major banks that their contingency plans simply won’t cut it. Chillingly, the Fed wrote to JPMorgan Chase that their plan was “not sufficiently actionable” and that it contained a “deficiency” so great that it could “pose serious adverse effects to the financial stability of the United States.”  Gulp.

Meanwhile, secret meetings between those in the economic know abounded last week and Saudi Arabia threatened the US with massive economic reprisals – and by massive, I mean billions and billions of dollars –  if their part in 9/11 came to light in a bipartisan bill on the table in Congress that would allow victims of 9/11 and other terrorist attacks to sue foreign governments.

A commodity trader has come forward (sort of…anonymously) and said that the current plan in the economic world is even worse. In his own words:

Here comes my Very-REAL Conspiracy Theory: the stupid FED and other Central Bankers around the world acting in unison to artificially raise inflation so that they can hopefully get out of the F’ing mess they got themselves into with this low/negative rate BS.  Call me crazy, and I am not a “conspiracy theorist” – but what is happening has absolutely no “reasonable” explanation.  So I have to think outside the box…

The FED and other Central Banks have already destroyed the equity and other macro-financial markets… it is now turn for the commodities markets…

Gee…what could possibly go wrong if/when that plan is enacted? Read the rest of his theory here.

Oh – and on a related note, if you ever wondered why no bankers have gone to jail for their parts in the economic cluster pulling the rest of the country under – an insider explains exactly why in this article. What could possibly go wrong with ignoring that?

You’ve Got to Taste It to Believe It

Do you have the supplies you need to survive an interruption in the supply chain? Regardless of what type of disaster you are preparing for, it pays to have nutritious, long-term supplies that you can rely on. Preppers Market features the products I use to ensure my own family’s health and well-being. You won’t find any GMOs, any soy, or chemical preservatives in our foods.  Gluten-free products are also available for those who do not tolerate wheat products.

Emergency foods are hard to fully appreciate without tasting. Before you make an expensive purchase, try our 4 recipe Sampler Pack: Pasta Primavera, Enchilada Beans and Rice, Granola and Sweet Habanero Chili.

Healthy food storage with GMO-Free ingredients and great taste are rare. I know you’ll be convinced when you taste test our food!

Go here to check out the high-quality offerings, or try a sample pack first. You won’t be disappointed in the delicious taste!

Remember How I Said Justice Scalia’s Death Would Have Serious Repercussions?

I’m not one to say “I told you so!” – wait – who am I kidding? I totally am.

So, here it is.

Remember how I said Scalia’s sudden death, whether it came from natural causes or he was murdered, could change everything? At immediate risk, it seems, will be our right to bear arms.

If you’re wondering what could possibly go wrong if we get someone left-leaning in office, consider that Scalia’s replacement could very likely be the deciding factor in whether or not the Second Amendment remains strong. And now, Chelsea Clinton has danced on his freshly turned grave affirmed the plan to poke even more holes in our right to protect ourselves and our families, and even points out how much easier it will be now that Scalia is no longer on the bench. As reported by SHTFplan:

“It matters to me that my mom also recognizes the role the Supreme Court has when it comes to gun control. With Justice Scalia on the bench, one of the few areas where the court actually had an inconsistent record relates to gun control.”

“Sometimes the court upheld local and state gun control measures as being compliant with the Second Amendment and sometimes the court struck them down.”

“So if you listen to Moms Demand Action and the Brady Campaign and the major efforts pushing for smart, sensible, and enforceable gun control across our country — disclosure [they] have endorsed my mom, they say they believe the next time the court rules on gun control, it will make a definitive ruling.”

Stock up, folks. Foodammo, and firearms.

Oh – and on a related note, did anybody else notice that Prince was immediately autopsied and a Supreme Court Justice was pronounced dead over the phone and instantly embalmed, thus precluding the possibility of an investigation into his death? Just sayin’.

Anything to add to Survival Saturday?

Oh – I do! Here’s one last link. Remember how our cat disappeared on moving day? Well, our pampered housecat managed to survive almost 5 weeks in the forest, and now he’s back. Of course, it got me thinking about how we could all learn some survival lessons from a lost kitty – you can check out the story here, assuming you don’t hate cats or happy endings.

from:    http://www.zengardner.com/survival-saturday-possibly-go-wrong/

More on Common Core

Common Core Education: Surveillance and Sexualization of Children

Common Core Student-1Makia Freeman, Contributor
Waking Times

Common core is the set of educational standards for American children funded by Bill Gates, the very same man who is pushing GMOs, vaccines and other New World Order (NWO) Agenda 21-style schemes. In another example of blatant doublespeak, the curricula are named “Common Core State Standards”, despite the fact they were forced onto the states with bribes, came top-down from the US Federal Government and were written by the international elite. Common Core first came onto the scene in 2009, after Obama took office, using money from the $350 million stimulus package. Common Core is another manifestation of a long-held dream of the NWO manipulators to replace the family with the State, a plan laid out in novels such as Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, which included reference to State hatcheries (i.e. State control of reproduction).

common-core-logo-hypnosis

Common Core: Of the Manipulators, By the Manipulators, For the Masses

Did you know Common Core is actually copyrighted? It’s a private set of standards. It’s of the manipulators (since it’s owned by them), written by the manipulators, but it’s for the masses – all the “common” people not wealthy enough to go rich schools where the future leaders of the New World Order will learn an entirely different curriculum … one which probably trains them to become creative thinkers rather than the “obedient workers” John D. Rockefeller wanted common Americans to become. Even the Common Core logo resembles something hypnotic and discordant.

Educator Dr. Duke Pesta has been working tirelessly to expose Common Core for what it really is ever since it was launched 7 years ago. In his presentation, Duke reveals how the Government is already pushing for “public boarding schools” to be open from 8am to 8pm, 365 days per year! He quotes 2 men who were at the forefront of American education, Horace Mann and John Dewey. The latter was an open communist:

“We are who engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause.” Horace Mann

“The children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society …” – John Dewey

Is Common Core helping the school to replace the family as a surrogate parent? Is Common Core promoting the idea of collectivism, that the individual is subservient to the group, institution, system and State? It would appear so, but that’s not all it’s doing.

common-core-1-500x462Common Core: Minimally Exceptional

Common Core is now being used in 47 out of 50 US states – in almost all public schools – and even if your children are in private schools or homeschooled, as long as they want to go to university or college, they will have to pass SAT/ACT tests written by the same man (David Coleman) who wrote the main English components! Common Core is not designed for local autonomy; teachers have to strictly follow its guidelines, or risk having students do poorly on the test. Duke plays video clips of 3 key men who were involved in creating Common Core:

“It would be great if our education stuff worked (Common Core), but we’re not going to know for a decade.” – Bill Gates

“Teachers will teach towards the test; there is no force strong enough to prevent teachers from teaching towards the test” – David Coleman, chief architect of Common Core, who never taught in an elementary school and never edited a scholarly journal. He has now joined College Boards writing SAT and ACT tests.

“[Common Core meets a] minimal definition of college readiness” (i.e. not for STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) – Jason Zimba, architect of Common Core mathematics, admitting “college ready” really meant ready for a non-selective community college

“Using Common Core math standards will put American students 2 years behind their international peers by the end of 8th grade, and further behind by the end of high school.” – Dr. James Milgram, who refused to sign off on the Common Core standards

To make matters worse, the Common Core assessments are meaningless tests, because the grading process is rigged (just like the votes in American elections)! Did you know that the people running Common Core advertised on Craigslist for temporary workers (at $9/hour) to grade papers? Then, these workers were told that they needed to mark papers to fit into a bell curve with standard deviations (a certain amount of 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s etc.) and “needed to learn to see more papers as a 3”. In others words, they had to fit the results into a predetermined spread and ignore the actual quality of the paper!

Common Core Surveillance

This is all bad enough, but hold on, because now it starts to get really Orwellian. Children are being spied upon more and more under Common Core. Some of the ways are stealthy, such as through devices like iPads, as this article suggests:

“Initially, in order to continue to be eligible for Obama’s “Race to the Top” federal funding, states were obligated to implement a Student Longitudinal Database System (SLDS), used to track students from preschool through college (P20-WIN). Some of us may recall the many reports about measuring 400 data points … could these one to one devices be another carefully disguised method of software-driven mass surveillance of students?”

” … all across America, more and more classrooms will be filled with children innocently using their iPads or other handheld devices. Children may be playing interactive educational games, doing interactive assignments, and writing stories that can be easily shared with the teacher and other students. These seemingly harmless activities are in fact being used to collect personal and private information without the parents’ consent or knowledge. Could that educational game be used to measure your child’s mental state? Could those interactive assignments involve morally ambiguous questions that can be used to create a psychological profile of your child? Could that shared story be used to predict violent behavior?”

This Truth in Media article states that:

“Perhaps even more alarming is the fact that data collection will also include critical appraisals of individuals with whom students have close family relationships. The Common Core program has been heavily scrutinized recently for the fact that its curriculum teaches young children to use emotionally charged language to manipulate others and teaches students how to become community organizers and experts of the U.N.’s agenda 21.”

Some of the Common Core surveillance is data mining, as this article explains:

“In this modern computer era, digital personal data is gold, currently being traded like currency … the CEO of Knewton explains how Education is today’s most data mined industry. He explains “the name of the game is data per user”. From Amazon or Netflix they get 1 data point per user per day. Google and Facebook 10 data points per user per day. In education, Knewton gets 5-10 million actionable data points per student per day! Apparently, every sentence of every passage in digital content has a data tag and they can tell how interested a child is in a certain topic, how difficult it was, etc., etc. Ten million data points a day! This data grab is a gold mine to companies that want to market and design products. For venture capitalists, Education is the new hot commodity.”

The NWO manipulators also have plans to introduce all sorts of devices into the classroom which intrude upon the basic privacy of children, including a “facial expression camera”, “posture analysis seat”, “pressure mouse” and “wireless skin conductance sensor”. See this report entitled Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance: Critical Factors for Success in the 21st Century for more details (pg. 62).

Common Core Sexualization of Children

Introducing kids to sex, including sexual education, at too young of an age, can be confusing and detrimental. A core theme of the worldwide conspiracy is the increasing sexualization of children, which is being fueled by the NWO manipulators’ indulgence in widespread pedophilia. The article Colorado School Employing “Anti-Bias” Curriculum Has Parents Asking Questions highlights how a Common Core aligned school is teaching an anti-bias curriculum. Sounds good, but this means more tyrannical and freedom-destroying political correctness, coupled with sex ed to 4 year olds! As an aside, the organization promoting this is “Teaching Tolerance” which is aligned with the Southern Poverty Law Center – the same one which covers up the truth by falsely branding people anti-Semitic etc.

Children are being encouraged to have sex and be sexual at an early age, which may well be developmentally inappropriate and harmful, given that amount of emotional maturity that is necessary to be involved in a sexual relationship. Now it’s going one step further. Some American public schools under Common Core are already giving advanced forms of birth control to children without parental knowledge. According to Duke, under Common Core, schools now have legal capacity to take teenage girls off campus to an abortion clinic to get an abortion – without informing or consulting parents!

Conclusion: Common Core is a Tool of the NWO

The word “common” in common core really means “lowest common denominator”. Essentially, Common Core is a form of socialism, Marxism or communism that brings everyone down to an equal level. George W. Bush let Senator Teddy Kennedy write the “No Child Left Behind” Act, which had too many stupid high-stake tests, too much social ideology and propaganda being injected, too little local teacher control and too much federal intervention. Common Core is all this on steroids: the ESSA Act (Every Student Succeeds Act) enshrines Common Core at the federal level, and retroactively legalizes all the illegal things the Federal Government did to get it through.

The bottom line is this: if you want your child to have your values, don’t throw him or her away to the State. Avoid Common Core all you can! Homeschool or find a private school that doesn’t do Common Core curriculum.

from:    http://www.wakingtimes.com/2016/04/21/common-core-education-surveillance-sexualization-children/