Why are brain breaks and physical activity during the school day important? Students need to stop and move their bodies throughout the day, this will help get the oxygen flowing to the brain. Brain breaks lead to students being more focused and productive during the day.
Children should get up every 30-60 minutes during the school day to move around for 5- 10 minutes.
Physical activity/Brain Break Ideas:
- Use a deck of cards, assign an exercise to each suit and use the numbers on the card to determine the number of time to practice each exercise
- Stand up and do 3 stretches
- Have a list of available activities and allow a new student to pick an activity each day
- 5-minute walking break around the classroom before an exam or quiz
- Pick an appropriate theme song and allow students to get up and dance for the length of the song
Wellness corners in the classroom: create a different theme in each corner of the classroom
- one corner of the classroom could be a breathing exercise
- one corner could be a coloring corner
- one corner could be a short yoga flow
- one corner could be meditation
Parents can help increase physical activity in the classroom too!
- Offer to take the children outside for a midday walk (if possible, have a short lesson outside)
- Work with the PTA to provide space in the school for recess. Consider wellness walls or wellness hallways or find an empty space in the school to have indoor recess (gym, cafeteria, auditorium, empty hallway)
- Donate or help raise money for a “bag of fun” indoor activities (jump ropes, balls, fitness DVDs, hula hoops)
- Let students decide what kind of indoor activity they would like to do.
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