May is National Physical Fitness and Sports Month. Dedicate yourself to being active this month and encourage your friends, family, and community members to do the same. We show you how…
1. Plan a Community Fitness Event
Plan a local run, host a spin-a-thon at your gym, organize a zumba class, or fundraise through any other physical activity. When you do it with the support of AFHK you can benefit your community and kids around the country. Just click here to start your active fundraiser, follow the step by step instructions, and you’ll be on your way.
2. Commit to Running a Marathon
Looking for an amazing challenge? Run in the Chicago or NYC Marathon with Team Healthy Kids for a reserved spot in the race. You’ll receive training from Kopf Running and a chance to meet Ultramarathon Man Dean Karnazes. Above all, your fundraising efforts will help us to create healthier kids and schools. Learn more and get motivated to run by listening to Dean’s interview on The Running Lifestyle blog.
3. Game On Challenge: Walk or Bike to School
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Over 1,900 schools participated in National Bike to School Day yesterday, but being active on the way to school should not be limited to one day a year. This month’s Game On Challenge shows you how to form a walking or biking club at school, how to organize or register for a school race, and how to plan ahead for next year’s bike to school day.
4. Five Clicks for Healthy Kids: Huffington Post Series
In honor of Every Kid Healthy Week, Action for Healthy Kids worked with the Huffington Post on a series of topics critical to student health and wellness. If you missed them, please take a moment to read them this week and help us generate broader awareness and future coverage of these issues by liking/sharing/tweeting via the icons beneath the author’s name at the top of each post.
- Making the Shift from Raising Awareness to Raising Healthy Kids by Dr. David Satcher, 16th United States Surgeon General
- A New Season of Collaboration and Possibility in School Health by Howell Wechsler, Alliance for a Healthier Generation
- Bleacher Talk: Taking Action for Active and Healthy Students by Mary Pat King, National PTA
- Doing Better: How School Leadership is Making Student Health and Well-Being a Priority by Sharon Adams-Taylor, AASA The School Superintendents Association
- Obesity Swept the Nation and Now Healthy Schools are Taking it Back… With Your Help by Rob Bisceglie, Action for Healthy Kids
5. Learn Why Collaboration is Key to a Healthier Future
AFHK board member Tori Kaplan emphasizes that leaders, schools, and individuals must come together to tackle any major goal, including improving health and wellness in schools. Tori, the Assistant VP of Corporate Responsibility at CSX Transportation, one of AFHK’s largest supporters, stresses that we first have to recognize the magnitude of the issues in order to face their demands. Read on to learn why Health in America’s Schools is Everyone’s Future and Everyone’s Job.
AFHK and CSX in Action: Tomorrow, we’re joining CSX Transportation at Fell Elementary School in Philadelphia to renovate the school’s gym, install new gym equipment, refresh recess space, and paint indoor and outdoor murals.
6. Let’s Move Together
Now that you’re well acquainted with AFHK, we want to introduce to our partner organization Let’s Move Active Schools. LMAS can help you simplify your selection of wellness resources, programs and funding opportunities and then recommend strategies to get your students moving for 60 minutes a day.
Additionally, LMAS provides professional development, coaching from national experts, and an exclusive library of curriculum, tools and implementation guides that complement AFHK’s Game On program, ensuring a comprehensive physical activity and physical education environment. Visit www.letsmoveschools.org to sign up, and make sure to tell them Action for Healthy Kids sent you.
Every Kid Healthy™ Week Round Up
We are thrilled to announce that more than 1,400 participating schools hosted fun, exciting, and health-filled Every Kid Healthy Week events. We’ve complied some of our favorite success stories from the week that range from morning movement dance parties to helping out at a local farm.
During a taste test at Trace Crossing Elementary in Hoover, AL, one student loved his first taste of guacamole so much, saying, “Even more kids would eat it if it was served inside a sombrero bowl that you wear on your head.” Meanwhile, students in Indianapolis were taught how to plant seeds, the importance of urban agriculture, and tips for how to live a healthy lifestyle at local Seven Steeples Farm. Over in Wisconsin, students lined up for a hot and healthy breakfast, and every student who participated got to choose an item from an array of footballs, soccer balls, frisbees, jump ropes, and hula hopes.
Did you shoot video of your Every Kid Healthy Week event? Remember to submit it on an iPhone or Android device and be entered into a raffle to win a $500 mini-grant for your school. View the guidelines for shooting and submitting videos. Upload your video by May 31, 2015.
Source: Action for Healthy Kids
May 7, 2015
http://www2.actionforhealthykids.org/webmail/21152/176092949/9c3aa9df1fc6b06e47cf9976b7047e54