Category Archives: Kids

Playground Boot Camp

“I oughta be doing that with you,” the moderately overweight mom who was watching her son yelled.

“We’re starting a class in April,” Polly Eslinger yelled back. “You’re welcome to join us.”

Eslinger’s response seemed to surprise the woman: We were on Cary’s Middle Creek Park Playground at the time, six grown-ups mixed among  kids cavorting on the equipment. A class in what, the woman probably wondered — playing on a playground? read more

Take the Pepsi challenge, snack food industry

Tuesday morning I was at a Brains & Bodies workshop conducted by Advocates for Health in Action, a consortium of local public and private sector groups “shaping a community where healthful eating and physical activity are the way of life.” Brains & Bodies is a program of the Wake County PTA designed to encourage healthy habits in our schools. Healthy habits such as PTA fundraisers that eschew cookie dough sales in favor of fun runs. That kind of thing. read more