As part of our efforts to be an “Active School” we continue to make improvements in a wide range of areas with regard to fitness and exercise in our school. Apart from our weekly yard and astroturf activities we celebrate being an active school by engaging in additional physical activities during the national annual Active School Week.
Our Active School Week for us was June 12th – 16th. Although nationally it was celebrated from April 24th to the 28th.
- We organised physical activities/games for all classes – similar to what we organized last year on the pitch.
- Physical Activities for homework only.
- Extra P.E. classes – timetable was distributed the week before with additional information.
- Nature trails / Math trails and School Tours during this week.
- We checked out www.activeschoolflag.ie for additional information on ‘Active Schools Week 2023’.
“Active School Week” – Is a week where we as a school do all we can to promote exercise and fitness as well as highlighting local voluntary sporting organisations to show what sporting and leisure activities are available in the locality.
As part of their homework children are required to do 5 minutes of exercise every evening. In order to ensure the integrity of the initiative parents are asked to note what type of exercise was completed each night in the homework notebook and sign off on it. Any type of exercise is encouraged! It might be playing in the garden or estate green area, skipping, going for a short walk, swim or cycle with an adult, dancing or jumping on a trampoline, training for a team sport etc. It will be easy to do this when the weather is good, but we ask that people be creative when the weather is unsuitable for outdoors. Children could do some dance, stretching, skipping and even some housework!
Many, and hopefully all, children are no doubt already doing this and more on a daily basis. The primary objective of this initiative is to raise awareness of the importance of incorporating exercise into our everyday lives. The benefits of living an active life are many and well documented. By bringing exercise and fitness to the forefront of the children’s minds we are hopefully planting a seed that will continue to grow throughout their teens and into their adult life. We hope that our school children will learn to value fitness for life.
