Give Your Kids a Healthy and Active Summer

"Parents play a powerful role in helping their children prepare mentally, physically, and emotionally for the upcoming school year. Here are some ways you can give your child a healthy and active summer through activities that help them be safe, healthy, engaged, supported, and challenged.

Keep Your Children Safe This Summer

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Physical Activity

• Water activities, like swimming and canoeing, are a fun way to stay cool. Check out these tips to enjoy the water safely.

Nutrition

• Want to try a new recipe? Be safe while doing so! Teach your child the basics of food safety and handwashing.

Social Emotional Learning

• Social and emotional learning starts at home. Check out a video and other resourcesexternal icon to learn more.

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Keep Your Children Healthy This Summer

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Physical Activity

• Help your kids and teens get 60 minutes of physical activityexternal icon every day! Check for free or low-cost sports camps at their school or the local rec center — or get active by walking, biking, or roller skating as a family during your summer vacation.

Nutrition

• Getting enough water every day is important for your child’s health. Help your child choose water over sugary drinks.

Social Emotional Learning

• Dancing to music from other countries and languages can strengthen the ability to empathize with others from diverse backgrounds and cultures. Try dancing, for example, to hits from around the worldexternal icon or other multicultural music options.

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Keep Your Children Engaged This Summer

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Physical Activity

Planting a garden together can foster teamwork and improve mood.

• Try using this Family Nature Club Toolkitexternal icon to help you plan and share outdoor experiences with like-minded friends and families who are yearning for “more green, less screen.”

Nutrition

• Download the Dining Decisions mobile app on your phone or tablet to help your kids make healthy food choices at home or on the go.

Social Emotional Learning

• Try planting a garden or volunteering at a community garden as a family. This can help foster teamwork and strengthen relationships..."
  Kids Healthy and Active Summer 

Protecting Kids from Environmental Exposure

"Protecting Kids from Environmental Exposure

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Children’s rapid development from before they are born through early childhood makes them more vulnerable to environmental exposures. Contact the experts at your nearest Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit (PEHSU)external icon to learn how to protect your child from exposure to health hazards in the environment.

What do these situations have in common?

• You are renovating an older home. While you are sanding window frames, some paint dust and chips fall on the floor. Your toddler puts them in his mouth.
• You live near an abandoned old factory. Your child loves playing in the dirt—and you have caught her eating mud pies.
• You enjoy gardening and use pesticides to protect your garden. However, you are pregnant and wonder if pesticide exposure could harm your unborn child.

If you guessed that in each situation, children are exposed to harmful substances in their environments, you are right!

Greater Exposure Risk

Children are especially vulnerable to hazards because they are growing and developing so. Children’s age-appropriate behavior (like crawling) also exposes them to hazards. They crawl and play on the floor or in the yard where they can be exposed to harmful substances—and they put everything in their mouths.

Just their physical size puts children at greater risk of exposure. From birth, children breathe more air, drink more water, and eat more food per pound of body weight than adults. An infant’s breathing rate is more than twice that of an adult’s.

Children continue to be vulnerable as they go through the developmental changes of puberty.

In 2008, the U.S. economic cost for children’s environmental exposures was estimated at $76.6 billion. But has your child’s pediatrician ever talked to you about environmental exposures? Has your obstetrician ever taken an environmental history and asked you about exposures around you?.."
Kids and environmental exposure 

Keep Kids Safe This Summer

"Hot weather provides opportunities for kids to enjoy the outdoors. Take steps to keep them safe and healthy, both indoors and outdoors.

Master Water Safety

Swimming and other water activities are excellent ways to get the physical activity and health benefits needed for a healthy life. Get the most from these activities while helping everyone stay safe and healthy.

• Parents and caregivers play a key role in protecting children from drowning. When kids are in or near water, closely supervise them at all times.
• Help prevent recreational water illnesses, which is illness caused by germs and chemicals found in the water we swim in. Keep the pee, poop, sweat, and dirt out of the water. Take kids on bathroom breaks and check diapers every hour, and change them in a bathroom or diaper-changing area–not poolside–to keep germs away from the pool.
• Stay safe while boating by wearing a life jacket. Properly fitted life jackets can prevent drownings and should be worn at all times by everyone on any boat...."

Kids and Summer

Every kid in a park initiative

"From sea to shining sea, our country is home to gorgeous landscapes, vibrant waterways, and historic treasures that all Americans can enjoy. But right now, young people are spending more time in front of screens than outside, and that means they are missing out on valuable opportunities to explore, learn and play in the spectacular outdoor places that belong to all of them.

President Obama is committed to giving every kid the chance to explore America’s great outdoors and unique history. That’s why, today, he launched an Every Kid in a Park initiative, which calls on each of our agencies to help get all children to visit and enjoy the outdoors and inspire a new generation of Americans to experience their country’s unrivaled public lands and waters. Starting in September, every fourth-grader in the Nation will receive an “Every Kid in a Park” pass that’s good for free admission to all of America’s federal lands and waters -- for them and their families -- for a full year..."
Kids in a park

Kids and Rabies

"Rabies is a dangerous virus that is found in the saliva of animals. It can infect and kill animals and humans. Every 10 minutes, someone dies from rabies. Even though anyone can get rabies, more than half of the people who get rabies are kids under the age of 15..."
Rabies And Kids

Who's Minding the Kids:Child Care Arrangements, Spring 2010

"Among fathers with a wife in the workforce, 32 percent were a regular source of care for their children under age 15, up from 26 percent in 2002, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. Among these fathers with preschool-age children, one in five fathers was the primary caregiver, meaning their child spent more time in their care than any other type of arrangement.

The series of tables titled Who's Minding the Kids? Child Care Arrangements: Spring 2010 showed that in a typical week, 12.2 million (61 percent) of the 20 million children under age 5 were in some type of regular child care arrangement.

As married women have increasingly moved into the labor force, fathers have become more available for child care while their wives are working..."

Kids, the School Bus, and You
Tips for driving among school buses.