Active Schools Challenge gets kids moving for National Fitness Day
To coincide with this year’s National Fitness Day, the curriculum based active lessons provider, imoves, has launched the ‘Active Schools Challenge’ free to all UK schools, as part of its mission to get every classroom active every day by 2022.
Wednesday 26 September marks National Fitness Day, a day dedicated to highlighting the role physical activity plays in helping everyone to lead healthier, more active lifestyles.
Across the globe, 50% of children are insufficiently active, and from the age of 7 the amount of time children are physically active declines year on year by 4%*. National Fitness Day is an opportunity to teach children about the importance of activity in their everyday lives, and help to tackle the growing obesity crisis and increasingly sedentary lives of children.
In order to support schools for National Fitness Day, imoves’ Active Schools Challenge is a free 30-day cross-curricular challenge designed to show schools how easy it really is to get children moving, boost academic performance and improve behaviour and wellbeing. It’s not about simply providing lesson plans for PE; it’s about getting kids learning across the curriculum using movement and active learning.
Imogen Buxton-Pickles, co-founder of imoves, comments: “It’s never been more critical that we get children more active. Daily physical activity is a proven formula for whole school improvement. Just 30 minutes activity everyday can increase attainment by up to 12% and improve behaviour by up to 67% – while helping to shape happier, healthier children overall. Yet for many schools, the idea of actually making the time to fit in activity is too much, with everything else they have to fit in in a school day.”
Throughout the 30 day challenge, imoves provides engaging guides to help introduce daily movement into the classroom and get children moving. Schools can make use of imoves’ extensive videos, lesson plans and resources to help them complete each challenge; there’s even a free calendar poster to get everyone excited to join in and ‘Active Pioneer’ certificates up for grabs for those who collect enough challenge points!
Imogen continues: “The Active Schools Challenge is about getting kids active every single day and National Fitness Day provides the perfect backdrop. We want all schools to get all kids active every day. Over the course of the challenge, they’ll be able to see the impact it has on class behaviour, attainment and wellbeing- but crucially they’ll be able to see how easy it is to make the change, with activity fitting in seamlessly into their school day.”
“National Fitness Day helps to shine a spotlight on the importance of activity for all, especially children. It kick starts the process to embeds activity into children’s everyday lives in an organic and sustainable way.”
Find out more about imoves and the Active Schools Challenge at https://imoves.com/pages/activeschoolschallenge
*Bryn Llewellyn & Andy Daly-Smith, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tARSCzHLF5g
