When kids enjoy an activity, they want to do more of it. Practicing a skill improves their abilities and helps them feel confident, especially when the effort is noticed and praised. Toddlers and preschoolers should play actively several times a day. Children from 6 to 17 years of age should do 60 minutes or more of physical activity daily. This can include free play at home and P.E. at school.

Preschoolers need play and exercise that help them continue to develop important motor skills — kicking or throwing a ball, playing tag or riding a bike with training wheels. Although some sports leagues may be open to kids as young as 4, organized team sports are not recommended until they’re a little older. Preschoolers can’t understand complex rules and often lack the attention span and skills needed to play sports. Instead of playing on a team, they can work on fundamental skills.

With school-age kids spending more time in front of screens, the challenge for parents is to get them to find physical activity they enjoy. This can range from traditional sports like baseball and basketball to biking, hiking, and playing outside. As kids get older, differences in ability and personality become more apparent. That is why it’s important to find an activity that’s right for your children.

Teens have many choices when it comes to being active — from school sports to after-school interests. It’s a good idea to have an exercise plan. Do what you can to make it easy for your teens to exercise by providing transportation and the necessary equipment (including workout clothes). In some cases, the right clothes and shoes might help a shy teen feel comfortable biking or going to the gym.

In addition to a child’s age, it’s important to consider his or her fitness personality. Meanwhile, be active yourself and support your kids’ interests. If you start this early enough, they’ll come to regard the activity as a normal and fun part of your family’s everyday routine.

Long school holidays help students clear their heads, relax a little and stretch their brains in different ways.

Traditionally, schooling schedules have long been based more on the needs of society than on education strategies(策略). For example, in Iceland it was traditionally arranged to allow children to help out with harvest. Other countries have long summer vacations because it is simply too hot to study. In other areas where religion plays an important role in the holiday season, the religion calendar then calls for the break, so that students can have enough time to participate in the religious ceremonies(仪式) and traditions of seasonal holidays.

There are some obvious advantages to a vacation that lasts longer. Families who live a long distance from relatives are able to travel together, sometimes across the ocean, in order to connect with their loved ones. Even if there is no visiting family far away, a long holiday is a great opportunity for kids to interact with the people. From an educational point of view, a child that is able to experience another culture can gain valuable language, history, and social skills.

Long school holidays are also needed in schools that have become overly academic and too exam-focused in recent years, which requires a considerably longer holiday break from such a “marathon pumping (灌输) of knowledge,” and it makes great sense!

Great psychologists, like Freud and Piaget, have stressed play’s central role in the formation of fully-rounded (全面发展的) individuals, so the long holiday achieves this by allowing students to explore the world outside school. The students get to participate in activities that would be difficult to do during a normal school term.

As a consequence, long school holiday can be quite useful to our students!

English Village is near the city of Paju in South Korea. It has a concert hall theater, and even a city hall. There are restaurants and coffee shops too, and the waiters in them are all English-speaking foreign teachers.

Students of about 13 or 14 years old are sent here to study English for two to four weeks. From nine to nine each day, they put their hearts into games, activities and tasks, which are specially designed to get them to communicate with English speakers. One of the most popular activities is making their own videos by using digital cameras and computers. The students are then asked to talk about their films in English.

There are lots of places for the kids to practice English speaking. For example, they can take money out of a pretend bank, and then use it to tip their waiter at the restaurant.

English village was built by Jeffrey John, an American businessman. He has worked in South Korea for a long time. He wants to make English learning be a happy and enjoyable task. “Everyone in Korea seems afraid of meeting and talking with foreigners,” said John, “but as you can see, the young girls who spent only three days in English Village are a lot more confident. They are no longer afraid of meeting foreigners and answering questions in English.”