Sure, getting regular physical activity has lots of great benefits.
But kids just want to have fun!
Make the Walk to School awesome for kids
- Check out some ideas below
- Use our worksheets and resources (dust off your laminators!)
- Tag @VicHealth on your Walk to School! We love seeing these moments on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
Ideas for Walk to School
Brainstorm anyone?!
If you want to get involved and need some ideas to get started, read on...
Schools, this one's for you:
- Set up multiple drop off zones to help ease congestion
- Remind families that part way is okay, or even once a week is good
- Offer incentives and rewards by using strategies to make walking, riding and scooting more appealing by ‘gamifying’ activities.
- Vary incentives and actions to suit different age groups; for example, stickers or badges appeal far more to younger students than older ones.
- Calendars can be used to help track the number of trips and also give recognition. VicHealth has a free downloadable classroom calendar.
- Footpath chalking! Kids chalk active travel and road safety messages on nearby footpaths
- Online passports and competitions to track kids’ active travel that can be designed and monitored by kids.
- Share success and personal stories in newsletters, social media posts, school app prompts
- Public commitments are great! Make a statement in your community about using active travel to support physical distancing and road safety through prominent messages at the entrance to school buildings.
- Create an active travel for ‘return to school’ page on your school’s website with information for parents.
- Link any active travel return to school actions to student committee planning, by running on online active travel event to capturing storytelling about local walking experiences.
Families, we’ve got you covered too:
- Part way is OK! Remember if the walk to school is too far, you can park a few blocks from the school and walk the rest of the way.
- Take it in turns with other parents to walk/ride/scoot to school with the kids, but ensure you maintain physical distancing with walking buddies outside your household.
How we’re helping
Did we mention we work with local councils to help make it safe, easy and accessible to walk to school? You could contact yours to see what they have planned.
We also fund grassroots projects.
