Month: January 2021

5 top tips for integrating physical activity into a home learning day

Post author By Sarah Price
Post date 14/01/2021

The Chief Medical Officers’ recommendation is that children should take part in an average of 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity each day. In normal circumstances a lot of this may be provided by opportunities within a normal school day, for example walking to and from school, playtimes, PE lessons and after school clubs. With children at home and parents supporting their learning, how can physical activity be integrated into the new ‘school day’?

Here are a few tips:

1. Start the day with some activity

Get the day off to a good start with some physical activity! Perhaps make it part of your morning routine. Being active releases lovely feel good chemicals that boost mood and can help to start your day in a positive mindset. Activities you could do include:

A workout – you could try our FFL Workout of the Week
A dance – to your favourite music or using a resource like Just Dance
A ‘follow me’ style video like Joe Wicks or Jumpstart Jonny

Our advice is to keep things varied and vibrant so perhaps do a different activity each morning. Why not join in with your children and boost your brain chemicals too?

2. Plan an outside physical activity into your day

Getting outside in the sunlight is so important for general well-being. Outdoor play would be normal at lunchtime within the school day. Perhaps plan an activity in to the middle of the day to break the day up a bit, have a change of scene and recharge your batteries. Activities you could do include:

Going out for a walk
Going for a jog/run
Going on a bike ride/scooter Ride

3. Have short brain breaks throughout the day

Being active releases chemicals in the brain that increase concentration and alertness! So whenever you feel a dip in your child’s motivation or concentration or they are finding a task particularly difficult, try a quick active brain break. Then return to the work and notice the difference! Visit Active 30 Durham Hub for some ideas for brain breaks.

4. Record and reward time spent being active

It can be motivating to record activity, see progress being made and be rewarded along the way. Perhaps create a reward chart where children can colour in the number of minutes they are active within the day. You can create goals and targets depending on your child’s starting point when it comes to activity. Some examples could be:

Completing 60 minutes on X number of days in the week.
Completing X number of minutes on a certain day or number of days
Completing 60 minutes for a streak of X days

What rewards can you give your children for completing their goal? Perhaps your child can think of some too!

To be effective for health benefits and to truly meet the CMO guidelines the activity levels should be moderate to vigorous. Our blog about what this is and how to measure it may be helpful.

5. Integrate movement with learning

If you can integrate movement with learning then you can kill two birds with one stone! We are slightly biased but we would argue that this can be more fun and engaging for some children. Active learning is something that is now very common in schools. Some ideas you could try:

Relay style games to collect answers or objects to then sort.
Treasure Hunts with questions or puzzles as clues or number/shape hunts in the house or outside.
Using your body to give answers e.g. squat for true, lunge for false, create letters or shapes with your body.
Target games with answers to hit or knock off or throwing a specific number to a target.

We hope you find these top tips helpful. We know juggling everything is challenging right now and we feel physical activity can be especially helpful to relieve stress, improve concentration and improve mood. It can be incorporated little and often into your day or in bigger chunks; whatever suits you best. I n Lockdown 1 children’s physical activity levels dropped significantly and we would like to support parents and schools to keep children moving in Lockdown 3. We have created some free to access resources that may be helpful:

Physical activity and wellness activties.

A Weekly challenge fusing physical activity and creativity.

Workout of the Week

Mental Wellbeing Activities

You can access them here – Lockdown 3 Resources

The difference between physical activity and Physical Education and balancing them both in Lockdown 3.

Post author By Sarah Price
Post date 07/01/2021

When children are at school they take part in both Physical Education (recommended 2 hours per week) AND physical activity (recommended 30 minutes a day in school).

There are distinct differences between the two:

Physical Activity is ‘…all bodily movement that uses energy’ (AfPE)

Physical Education…’ takes place in a school curriculum…and involves learning to move and moving to learn’ (AfPE)

Benefits of each

Both types of movement provide many benefits for young people:

Benefits of Physical Activity	Benefits of Physical Education
1. Improve physical health and fitness 2. Improve mental health and well being 3. Improve cognitive function 4. Reduce the risk of some diseases 5. Social interaction with friends and family members 6. Ease of access – scope for all to be involved as there will be no financial cost, equipment not always necessary.	1. Points 1-5 of Physical Activity benefits 2. Improved physical literacy 3. The knowledge and understanding of how to lead a healthy lifestyle 4. Developing wider skills – eg: leadership, communication skills, resilience, teamwork, confidence and social skills 5. Acquiring the technique to perform individual transferable physical skills; being given the chance to develop them and put them into practise in a variety of environments 6.Evaluating skills; recognising what is good and what requires improvement and how to go about this 7. Breadth of opportunity – being able to unlock possible potential through a rich menu of high quality experiences 8. Personal targets and challenges and how to set these, to help individuals to achieve and make progress
Examples of Physical Activities	Examples of Physical Education Activities
Going for a walk, jog or run Going on a bike ride Doing the housework Doing some DIY Gardening Taking part in a fitness class Recreational sport	A wide variety of sports and activities – Games, Swimming, Gymnastics, Dance, Outdoor Education Adapted games and activities that have a key objective Learning rules and regulations Being a sports leader Refereeing, umpiring and officiating Potential to gain qualifications not only in PE but also in leadership and officiating

There is some clear overlap between the two.

When children take part in Physical Education they are likely to also be physically active. However, when children take part in physical activity, there may not be strong elements of learning taking place, that would equate to that within a Physical Education session. Learning is the key element of Physical Education.

Many children and parents are currently grappling with the demands of ‘home learning’. Providing physical activity and Physical Education opportunities within this can be helpful not just for physical health and physical literacy but also for looking after mental health and creating a readiness to complete academic work set.

Our suggestion while learning at home, is to find the balance that suits you best, but to try to include both Physical Education and physical activity opportunities. A good aim would be to meet the Chief Medical Officers guidelines of 60 minutes of activity a day and split that between physical activity and Physical Education. You could do this in a variety of ways, for example:

20 mins Physical education per day, 40 mins physical activity per day
2 days Physical Education focus, 3 days physical activity focus

There are a range of resources available to support parents to encourage their children to be active at home. A good selection of these can be found on the Active 30 Durham Hub (open to all – link below).

Top tips for delivering Physical Education based activities at home

Use a Physical Education based resource
Give demonstrations to your child (or ask other siblings to) to show good technique
Ask your children questions during the activity such as “How does it feel? How can you improve your technique? When would you use this?”
Have lots of fun interacting with your child and watching them achieve and learn new things!
Practise to improve and be proud of all achievements!

Good luck!

This blog was a collaboration between multiple members of the Go Well team. For more information email info@go-well.org.