Walk to School Day 2018

Walk to School Day is Wednesday, October 10, 2018, though some schools celebrate on a different day that better fits their school schedule.

We encourage students to walk (or bike or roll) to school that day. Even if you don’t regularly do so. For younger students who do not regularly walk to school, it can be a great opportunity for students to walk with a parent or older family member, talking about crossing the street safely, selecting the best route, and enjoying the time together. If it isn’t possible to walk all the way from home, then stop a few blocks short of the school and walk the rest of the way. Physical activity in the morning before school leads to better academic performance during the school day (your brain is already awake), and creates happier and more resilient people.

Three schools are known to be planning celebrations that day: Kingswood, Mariemont, and Will Rogers. Each will have some incentives for students who get to school under their own power. Any school can host activities that day, picking something simple that works for students, staff, and parents. For ideas, and to register additional schools, see the Walk and Bike to School Day website.

Take a photo of you, your friends, and your family walking, bicycling, or rolling, and post it to social media with the hashtag #SanJuanWalks and your school name, and then follow the tag to see who else is walking.

Tracking your own physical activity with Human

Yesterday’s post was about tracking your daily physical activity minutes by participating in the Fire Up Your Feet Spring Challenge. You can keep track online, or on paper and enter the data later.

You can also use an app to keep track of your activity. My favorite for keeping track of physical activity is Human. It records minutes of physical activity with an app that works in the background, on all the time, but uses little battery. It is available from Apple’s App Store for the iOS platform. There may well be similar apps for the Android platform, but I don’t have any information on those.

Human also integrates with the Health application on iOS, giving you access to more information including active calories, cycling distance, walking + running, and workouts. Health can gather information from several different applications, and can also write information back to some of those applications.

Unfortunately there is no app for the Spring Challenge, so you will have to transfer your physical activity minutes by hand from Human to the online activity tracker, or to a paper chart if your classroom is keeping track in that way.