... is that too much to expect from a 3rd grader?
if you hike or just go for walks, what distances do your children walk?
if you hike or just go for walks, what distances do your children walk?
I would not expect an 8 year old who has not been walking to school previously to walk 2 miles to school 5 days a week. I would, however, expect that an 8 year old with the habit of walking - both habits with respect to safety as well as habits of keeping moving at a reasonable pace - to be able to walk.
Which is just 3/4 of the daily recommendation for aerobic exercise for a school-aged child. According to the CDC, this child would still need an additional 15 minutes.
Good grief, we walk 0.3 miles to school, and we get lots of raised eyebrows.
It might be a bit of prejudice against not having a car. I've run into that. It's ok to exercise to exercise but walking to school or riding your bike to work is another matter to some, lol.
Really? What about an hour or 2 at the playground? An hour really isn't that long to spend doing physical activity.
A child I can see it taking 45-50minutes, but as an adult I can walk 2 miles in under 30minutes. 50 minutes to walk 2 miles is a long time for an adult.Originally Posted by happysmileylady
The short answer is that I think an 8 yr old should be totally capable of walking 2 miles, to school or anywhere else.
However, in this particular situation, I am not so sure I would do it either. First, while child is physicallly capable, it's pretty boring to walk that alone every day. I understand the mamma walking with the child, but then for mom, we are talking about 3.5 hours taken hour of her day, every day, just in child to school transport. That's 50 minutes to walk the child there, 50 minutes to walk back home, then 50 minutes to walk to the school to pick the child up and 50 minutes to get back home. That's a lot of time invested. Most mammas, especially if they have more than one child, just don't have that kind of time to do that, every day during the week. Yeah, that might make me look a little sideways at a mamma who said she was planning to do this.
In this situation, I would highly recommend biking. The advantages of the physical activity are there, but the time investment would be much smaller. And, because the trip is shorter, mamma wouldn't have to go with EVERY time, leaving some of her time more free to get other stuff done.