Statewide Turnoff Week 2008, April 21-27

By 3 months of age, about 40% of children regularly watch television, DVDs, or videos on average 1 hour per day by age 12 months. The reasons parents choose this is for education, entertainment, and babysitting (Zimmerman et al, Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med, May 2007).

As part of the Month of the Young Child, the New York State Department of Health and the Center for SCREEN-TIME Awareness are inviting you and your school or community organization to participate in the 2nd Statewide Turnoff Week which is April 21-27, 2008. This is a great opportunity to continue to meet the needs of all young children and their families to find fun, active alternatives to hours in front of a screen. Some suggested activities to do during this week are:

• Family dinner nights – Have each member pick a night which cannot be changed, after dinner pull out a board game, a deck of cards, or something else to do and make a night of it.
• Mealtime fun nights – Cooking nutritious meals with each other and learning measurements and feeling the texture of vegetables and seeing the various colors make completing the meal fun. Enjoy the conversation with each other as you work together to finish up the meal and discuss how delicious the meal is at the dinner table. This may just be the start of your very own “yum-yum recipe book”.
• Library days – Spend time at the library, look through various books, educational magazines, and learn some facts about the city/town where you may live. You may be surprised what may have existed in your very own neighborhood.
• “I spy” hunt game – Prepare an adventure with your family as you walk through your neighborhood or downtown depending on what may work best for your family. Start with looking for certain shapes/colors of items such as mailboxes, windows, shapes of homes, birds, or cars that may be parked. For example you say “I spy a red shovel.” The other family members job is to look for the item and let you know where they see it. Keep in mind this would be based on ages of children as you do this fun game.