• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
Wednesday, July 9, 2025
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News Health

No sweat? That's an issue for home-schooled children

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
February 1, 2019
in Health
Reading Time: 4 mins read
0
ADVERTISEMENT
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

Rice University study suggests many fall short of exercise goals despite organized activities

IMAGE

Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University

Parents who home-school their children may think putting them into organized sports and physical activities keeps them fit, but Rice University researchers say young people need more.

Faculty at the Rice Department of Kinesiology studied data gathered from 100 home-schooled children age 10-17 to back up their assumption that such activities are sufficient to keep children physically fit. The data, however, proved them wrong.

The Rice researchers’ results are available in an open-access paper in the Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology.

Laura Kabiri, a sports medicine lecturer at Rice, said the problem lies in how much activity is part of organized regimens. According to the World Health Organization, children should get about an hour of primarily aerobic activity a day, but other studies have noted children involved in non-elite sports actually get only 20 to 30 minutes of the moderate to vigorous exercise they require during practice.

The Rice researchers decided to quantify it through statistics Kabiri gathered about home-schooled children and adolescents as a graduate student and postdoctoral researcher at Texas Woman’s University.

“We assumed – and I think parents largely do as well – that children enrolled in an organized sport or physical activity are getting the activity they need to maintain good body composition, cardiorespiratory fitness and muscular development,” Kabiri said. “We found that is not the case. Just checking the box and enrolling them in an activity doesn’t necessarily mean they’re meeting the requirements they need to stay healthy.”

Kabiri said the researchers suspect the same is true for public school students in general physical education classes, where much of the time is spent getting the class organized. “When you only have 50 minutes, it’s very easy for half that time or more to go to getting them in, out and on-task,” she said.

While public school data would be easier to gather, home schooling presents a different problem for researchers. “There’s a lot that’s not known about this population, and the population is expanding,” Kabiri said. “Home school is becoming very popular in the United States. It’s grown steadily.

“And now that Texas students can have a free online public education starting in grade 3, I think this population is going to expand. I want to make sure that the health aspect and the physical activity and exercise components of their education don’t fall through the cracks,” she said.

“My understanding is that the state program addresses physical education, but if you’re a general home-school student in the state of Texas, there is no requirement at all for physical activity, and physical education, nutrition and exercise information is largely left up to the parents,” she added.

The authors concluded parents would be wise to give their children more time for unstructured physical activity every day.

“Parents know if they attend activities and don’t see their kids breathing and sweating hard, then they’re not getting enough exercise,” Kabiri said. “So there should be more opportunities for unstructured activity. Get your kids outside and let them run around and play with the neighborhood kids and ride their bikes.

“If I learned one thing about home-school families, it’s that they are really dedicated to the entire education of their children,” she said. “If there’s an issue, they will want to know and will make adjustments as needed.”

###

Co-authors of the paper are Augusto Rodriguez, Amanda Perkins-Ball and Cassandra Diep, all lecturers in the Rice Department of Kinesiology. The study was funded in part by the Texas Physical Therapy Foundation.

Read the abstract at https://www.mdpi.com/2411-5142/4/1/13.

This news release can be found online at https://news.rice.edu/2019/02/01/no-sweat-thats-an-issue-for-home-schooled-children/

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.

Related materials:

Kabiri Research Group: https://kabiri.rice.edu

Rice Department of Kinesiology: https://kinesiology.rice.edu

Wiess School of Natural Sciences: https://naturalsciences.rice.edu

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,962 undergraduates and 3,027 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 2 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. To read “What they’re saying about Rice,” go to http://tinyurl.com/RiceUniversityoverview.

Media Contact
David Ruth
[email protected]
713-348-6327

Related Journal Article

http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jfmk4010013

Tags: EducationK-12Medicine/Health
Share12Tweet8Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

ChatGPT’s Potential in Stated-Calorie Diet Planning

ChatGPT’s Potential in Stated-Calorie Diet Planning

July 8, 2025
blank

Microbiome Cell-Free RNA Differentiates Colorectal Cancer

July 8, 2025

Evolving Deaminase Hotspots for Precise Cytosine Editing

July 7, 2025

Linking Body, Behavior to Atherogenic Risk Ratio

July 5, 2025
Please login to join discussion

POPULAR NEWS

  • Zheng-Rong Lu

    Pancreatic Cancer Vaccines Eradicate Disease in Preclinical Studies

    75 shares
    Share 30 Tweet 19
  • Enhancing Broiler Growth: Mannanase Boosts Performance with Reduced Soy and Energy

    72 shares
    Share 29 Tweet 18
  • AI Achieves Breakthrough in Drug Discovery by Tackling the True Complexity of Aging

    69 shares
    Share 28 Tweet 17
  • New Organic Photoredox Catalysis System Boosts Efficiency, Drawing Inspiration from Photosynthesis

    54 shares
    Share 22 Tweet 14

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

ChatGPT’s Potential in Stated-Calorie Diet Planning

Key Amino Acid Changes Attenuate Yellow Fever Vaccine

Giardia Triggers Type 2 Immunity That Reduces Gut Inflammation

  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.