Kids Love ReCharge!

At Dr. John’s Sports Center in Cedar Park, Texas, founder John Krampitz, Ph.D., was looking for a program that could teach kids about healthy living – and provide useful information parents could use at home – when he caught a TV spot about ReCharge! Energizing After-School during an NFL football game.

After a little research, Krampitz realized ReCharge! – which helps students in second through sixth grades learn about and practice good nutrition and physical activity habits through fun team-based, after-school strategies – fit the bill.

“It was just right down our alley. I loved the lessons and the extensions of the lessons on the Web site and the support it provided. It gave us a lot of good ideas in terms of where we use some of the lessons. We were able to take the lessons and modify them so that they were appropriate for kindergarten through fifth grade,” Krampitz explains, adding that he particularly likes the ReCharge! approach because it integrates nutrition and physical activity through a variety of lessons.

                       Kids at Dr. John's Sports Center take some "Energy In."

So whether kids are “Two-Ball Juggling,” “Serving up Nutrition,” “Intercepting Nutritious Snacks” or, as in the case of the center, using Food Model cards in a Dr. John’s-styled modification, the kids were learning and practicing healthy behaviors.

Krampitz’s team also found components such as the ReCharge! Trackers especially useful in the center’s teaching efforts because they helped kids keep “score” of their healthy nutrition and physical activity choices.

“Energy In” (nutrition)

Energy In, for instance, encourages kids to make three healthy nutrition choices each day by using the Rookie Tracker. And at Dr. John’s, Krampitz’s team used the program’s Food Model cards to incorporate their own fun, nutrition-focused exercises into the program. So when it was time for kids to transition from snack time to their activity period, the staff at Dr. John’s used the cards to help kids recognize foods by group and nutritional value.

“We’d hold the cards up and ask, “Which one of these foods has the most fiber? Which one of these has the most vitamin C? Which one of thee foods has the most calcium? Which one of these foods has the most fat?” he explains. “And the kids have to vote on what they think is the correct answer. If they get the answer correct, they get to go play first. … I really liked the food cards. It’s one of the parts of the package that continues to help us and we’ve used in so many ways. We use them almost weekly.”

Not surprisingly, Petra Wagner, a fitness instructor with Flagler County, Fla. public schools had similar Energy In results in the four elementary schools where she taught the program.

“The food descriptions worked pretty well, especially when we handled food. We counted the snacks, the serving size. They liked doing that and I thought that was great,” Wagner says. “It made kids realize that they should eat only so much before they have to exercise again. That was really good. Portion size was another thing. They did not like to be limited with portion size. But again, it opened their eyes. We used (miniature crackers) in one school and some kids just piled up like five cups as a serving. Then, we told them let’s count. I think there were 55 (miniature crackers) as a serving so they said, ‘Oh my God, I’ve been eating too much.’ ”

Clearly, the students were getting the message about the importance of keeping score of their calorie intake.

“Energy out” (physical activity)

Yet, while Wagner also found Energy Out – which encourages physical activity for 60 minutes each day – effective, she discovered a gender-based limitation to the program.

“Some girls did not want to play with that ball. It was just so hard on their hands when they had to catch it,” she says. But overall she believes the program worked well because it got kids moving and taught them about football in the process.

“It’s a great way of learning football in general. Some kids really started to grasp the concept of it and had never played before. We even included some of the younger kids in some of the schools because they were really well-behaved. So, we had some kindergarteners that really got the concept of playing football even though they didn’t understand it at first,” she added.

Meanwhile at the YMCA Children’s Center of Freeport, Ill., Stephanie Diehl, senior childcare director, saw the Energy Out component as a novel way to teach kids about the necessity of physical activity. “I thought it was a very catchy way to be like, ‘Okay, so if we’re going to do this, what does that mean we have to do? ‘We’ve got to get our energy out.’ … That was a really easy concept of the kids to learn. It was fun, but it was educational. I think it really helped bring it into focus for the kids.”

Teamwork

Teamwork is another concept Diehl thinks ReCharge! makes easy for kids to understood, mostly, she says, because ReCharge! is structured around the idea of teamwork: “I think the activities just lend themselves to be more team-oriented and because it wasn’t a competitive thing, I think it allowed for more team work.”

Goal-setting

There were mixed results, though, when it came to goal-setting. Wagner, for instance, learned that her fifth and sixth-graders were less motivated about setting goals than the younger students.

“The older kids were heading toward their teen years. So, they didn’t care that much any more. But the younger kids said, ‘My goal is to get stronger and be able to touch my toes’ and they did,” she explains. Other goals included eating more healthy foods and fewer junk foods for lunch and cutting their portion sizes. And Wagner remembers one participating second-grader who was developmentally delayed, had low self-esteem and was a bit withdrawn. But setting –and accomplishing – his ReCharge! goal gave him confidence.

“We taught him how to catch the football. That was one of his goals and he did it,” she says. “He actually amazed us at the end.”

Home-field Advantage

By the time Dr. John’s neared the end of its ReCharge! experiment, Krampitz was clear, ReCharge! was having a healthy impact on Dr. John’s kids both at the center and at home.

“That home connection was real important to us. That’s one of the things that drew us to it because our niche is a healthy environment, teaching kids these health behaviors,” Krampitz says. “And our shtick is healthy kids are better learners. Healthy kids have more friends; They aren’t sick as often. And, all of the data show how important it is for them to eat good food and be active every day. But that message didn’t seem to be getting home to the parents, or we weren’t getting feedback from the parents that that was the message they were getting.”

ReCharge! of course, changed all that. After the center began using the program, Krampitz says parents reported back that kids were insistent about how many servings of fruits and vegetables they needed every day.

Clearly, the program worked and whether in Flagler County, Fla., Freeport, Ill. or Cedar Park, Texas, ReCharge! seemed to educate and energize kids after school.