Healthy Kids First began in New Haven schools in 2004 to improve “the health and vitality" of students and their families. Among other nutritional improvements, the initiative has removed soda, candy and junk food from school vending machines.

“And who’s the mean lady responsible for that?" Superintendent Reggie Mayo teased Jennifer Gura’s second graders. “She’s standing right over there!" Robin Golden, the school system’s chief operating officer â€" but more importantly, chair of the Citywide Nutrition Committee â€" waved.

The $85,000 grant from the Connecticut Health Foundation will allow K-5 kids in six schools to pilot Take 10! starting in the fall. The program features two 10-minute exercise periods per day, five days a week, which incorporate age-appropriate physical activity into academic lessons. So, the second graders did a lot of basketball moves (with no ball), squats and jumps. Then they sat on the floor and did stretches.

Throughout, Gura (at left), who was jumping and squatting with the kids, asked questions like, “What’s your favorite fruit? What’s your favorite vegetable? What’s your favorite grain?" She did not ask them, “What’s your favorite dessert?" or “What’s your favorite double cheese pizza?" She asked why they were doing all this jumping around, eliciting a shouted, “To be healthy!"

The participating schools in addition to Brennan are Vincent Mauro, J. Martinez, Clinton Avenue, Hill Central and Troup Magnet.

Nobody’s thinking that 20 minutes of exercise a day â€" while laudable â€" is by itself going to change much for the kids involved. An article in The New York Times on Sunday reported that two studies of improved nutrition and increased physical activity in schools revealed no differences between the targeted group and the control group. The conclusion was that more must be done outside of school hours.

Golden agrees. “The partners we are working with in the Community Health Network are working on parent involvement and parent education. So that’s a big push for the nutrition committee in the coming year. We’ll educate these kids; they have to go back and educate their parents, and we have to help their parents figure out how to make the foods they like, but use less fat and things like that."

“We don’t expect to see this have a direct impact on obesity right away, because it’s 20 minutes per day. But what we are expecting to see is the kids more focused, more time on task, to improve the behavior and take their stress level down, since with all the testing in No Child Left Behind, there’s a lot of stress in the classrooms now."

All the more reason to be jumping, Jack and Jill.