Watch now: With remote learning, how does gym class work? A Decatur park offers solution – Herald & Review

DECATUR — Spending several hours a day in front of a screen because all your classes are online can make kids restless and ready to get outside and do something.

“I wanted to come because I thought it would be fun and I wanted to do something my brother isn’t doing,” said Caden Deaton, 8, who was one of several kids at the Decatur Park District’s “PE in the Park” on Thursday.

The six-week program meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays at Pavilion 1 in Fairview Park, and is led by employees from the Decatur Indoor Sports Center. Each week will feature a different theme, said Tracy Hewitt, fitness supervisor.

Many area districts are having remote learning or a mix of in-person and virtual courses because of COVID. That means a lot of screen time for kids. 

On Tuesday, she introduced the kids, all in elementary grades, to circuit training: squats, burpees, side lunges, lateral lunges.

“Circuit training is just a fancy way of saying ‘stations,’” Hewitt told the children on Thursday as she ran them back through the proper techniques for doing the exercises. After the review, she said, they were going to use the park’s trees as the stations. “You’ll go to a tree, do some stuff, go to another tree, do some stuff,” she said, and when one or two kids seemed to be flagging, she joked, “Don’t get tired on me already! We have just started.”

Thursday’s overcast skies made for slightly cooler conditions than the area had earlier in the week, but it was still plenty hot and muggy, and the carrot on the stick was that after the circuit training, the kids would get to play with water guns and water balloons, she said.

Brothers Zeke and Isaiah Mann, ages 9 and 6, were also among the group, and Zeke said he likes sports, which have mostly been called off due to COVID-19 restrictions, so getting outside and being active was appealing.

Isaiah just wanted to have some fun, he said, and as the youngest participant, he was the one with most enthusiasm.

PE in the Park was originally scheduled to begin last week, but the park district held off a week and changed the time in consideration of the requirements of remote learning in Decatur Public Schools. The program is aimed at students 5 to 13, and costs $60 for non-residents, $55 for residents. Classes meet 1:15 to 2 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays through Oct. 8. Call (217) 428-3472 to register.

“We’re giving the kids a chance to learn different things about different sports and fitness in general,” Hewitt said. “And we’re giving them the chance to interact with other kids safely outside and just have some fun.”

Even at their age, form is important, and Hewitt made sure the children understood how to do the exercises without hurting themselves – where to put their center of gravity, how to hold their bodies and so on.

She wants to make sure they make fitness and cardiovascular endurance a lifelong habit, she said.

“You’ve got a lot of years left in those bodies,” she said to the children.