LFCDS, Woodlands Promote Health and Fitness

There is much concern about the size of American students.

In this day and age of 500 channels, video games and shrinking budgets that sometimes cut out physical education courses, two local Lake Forest schools are taking initiatives to make sure their students are active this year.

Lake Forest Country Day School and Woodlands Academy have new initiatives in 2012-13 to keep kids in shape.

At LFCDS, new curriculum is being developed for seventh and eighth graders this year that will emphasize the body to mind connection and talk about the importance of nutrition, stress management and hygiene among other subjects with the students. This program is scheduled to be extended to fifth and sixth graders next year.

“With the goal of encouraging children of all ages to value good health and providing them with the tools to achieve it, the Physical Education department at LFCDS has been restructured into Physical Education & Wellness,” Beth Black, the LFCDS Director of Marketing and Enrollment said in an e-mail to Patch. “The department will place a stronger emphasis of students’ mind/body connection as it relates to fitness and athletics as well as physical and mental health.”

At Woodlands, the all girls prep school founded in 1858, a fitness center that has been expanded by 340 feet will be in use this year and there will be a new dance and yoga facility for the school that has about 30 additional students in 2012-13.

At LFCDS, whose roots go back 1888 and serves 380 children from pre-school to eighth grade, another major project just now underway is collaboration with Lake Forest Open Lands Association to restore a seven acre woodland on the school property.

“The acreage has remained untouched for nearly a century, and the goal is to transform the land into a ‘living classroom’ that will connect LFCDS students to outdoor education in ways that have never been able to be accessed before,” Black said.

This project comes along as seven new teachers will be in place at LFCDS.

For their part, Woodlands will be emphasizing “flipped teaching,” with the goal of creating more individual time between teacher and student, according to information supplied by school officials including Head of School Gerald Grossman.

Specifically, under flipped teaching with a teacher will create a video or a micro site and students will jump into the material and then go to the teacher with questions. With the teachers now all having iPads, this process should be strengthened.

Woodlands has added three new teachers this year, one in English and two in music related courses.

Of course a major issue remaining on the hands of Woodlands is to how to  that was donated last year. The decisions are still being finalized in that situation.

Both schools will maintain anti-bullying efforts that have been in place for years.

For a look at what the new school year brings to two other local Lake Forest private schools, .

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