Demand has surged for outdoor and wilderness programs, driven by parents desperate to get their kids off-screen and out of the house. Numerous New England wilderness schools report they could double or triple their already increased programming and still have waiting lists. “I think we’re entering the golden age of outdoor education,” says Sam Stegeman, executive director of the Vermont Wilderness School. “Because of COVID, one of the silver linings is we’re finally getting huge…
Most days, Jen Lamott would describe her daughter, Katie, as cheerful and kind. Lately, though, the 7-year-old has been acting moody and sometimes grunting instead of talking. “It’s like we have a teenager suddenly,” Lamott said. But while teenagers’ attitudes are usually chalked up to puberty, Lamott knows that something else is at play in her house: exhaustion. Katie has been having trouble falling asleep, expressing greater sleep anxiety and starting to take naps to…
A national group that seeks to curb chronic absenteeism is sounding an alarm after finding that the number of chronically absent students continued to surge even as pandemic closings abated. The organization, Attendance Works, believes that the number of students missing at least 18 days of school a year doubled to 16 million in 2021-22 from 8 million students before the pandemic. If correct, this means that one out of every three public school children…
They say playing is the work of children—and it’s true! Play is how children learn about the world, themselves and each other. It’s as much a part of healthy development as eating vegetables, reading books together and getting a good night’s sleep. Even the United Nations lists play as one of the basic rights of every child. There is no right or wrong way to play. It’s anything from sticking a hand in mashed potatoes to…
In Fairfax County, Virginia, thousands of middle school students experience what most of their peers leave behind in elementary school — recess. The break is only 15 minutes long, but at Rocky Run Middle School (about 25 miles west of the nation’s capital), the seventh and eighth graders make the most of one of the few stretches of time in school that they can truly call their own. Fairfax County schools, a district of around…
At this stage in the long slog of the pandemic, many of us are forgoing masks in places we previously wore them and getting together indoors when we had formerly avoided it. But the holidays throw new variables at everyone’s risk calculus. People trek across the country to see each other. Families crowd around dinner tables, with older, more vulnerable people sitting beside their younger relatives. As we enter our third pandemic holidays, experts are…
Children might start going to school in darkness next year in exchange for more sun later in the day, while their parents commute home from work with the benefit of light. Those would be among the impacts of ditching standard time and adopting year-round daylight saving time, a change in legislation the Senate recently passed with virtually no opposition. If the Sunshine Protection Act, as written, were to gain House approval and President Joe Biden’s…
Back to school brings bandages, bumps and bruises, but it also brings meeting students’ needs for sensory challenges, chronic conditions such as diabetes and food allergies, emotional needs such as anxiety and depression, and battling infectious diseases — including COVID. What should families know for the 2022-2023 school year? These school nurses will tell you themselves. School nurses need up-to-date information on a student’s needs — including medical conditions, changes in the home, and other…
Parents of children under 5 could be able to get their youngest family members vaccinated as soon as next week after the Food and Drug Administration authorized the vaccines by Modern and Pfizer on Friday. COVID vaccines for kids under 5 are slowly rolling out around the US as of June 21, 2022. Children under 5 are the last age group to become eligible for COVID vaccines. While only 3% of U.S. COVID cases were…
Perhaps the only respite pandemic closures brought to to families was freedom from the constant misery of summer colds, complete with all the dripping noses, sneezes, and coughs. And statistics suggest we weren’t the only ones who had fewer colds last year: with daycares and in-person schools closed and widespread use of masks and hand sanitizer in most communities, cases of many seasonal respiratory infections went down, and flu cases dropped off a cliff. That…
