An Oakland nonprofit will be among organizations helping First Lady Michelle Obama and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack throw a Healthy Kids Fair on the White House’s South Lawn tomorrow for D.C.-area public school students and their families.

The event – focused on health and wellness, nutrition and physical fitness – will feature chefs and nutritionists from around the country demonstrating healthy, affordable cooking, and preparing affordable meals for families as well as various exercise and play activities.

For the latter, there’ll be four coaches there from Oakland-based Playworks. Formerly known as Sports4Kids, Playworks is the nation’s only nonprofit placing trained, full-time coaches in low-income schools to direct organized play at recess and throughout the day.

“People are really starting to take play seriously,” Playworks communications director Cindy Wilson told me today.

Why? Because they’ve found that directed, focused play not only improves children’s physical fitness and reduces playground conflicts, but also helps students settle down faster when returning from recess to the classroom – up to 18 minutes faster. That’s dozens of hours of reclaimed classroom instruction time per school year, Wilson said.

And that’s why 170 schools in 10 U.S. cities are willing to pay $23,500 each to be in the program, she said. The rest of it is supported by philanthropy, including a five-year, $18.7 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation aimed at expanding the program to 650 schools nationwide.

And it all got its start right here in 1996 in the East Bay, with two Berkeley schools.

Community Training Program Manager Jeremy Lansing, from Playworks’ Oakland headquarters, will join two Playworks coaches from D.C. and one from Baltimore in leading about 150 kids and adults in some high-energy play at the White House tomorrow.

“We’re very honored to be part of the event there,” Wilson said.