Viva Vitality: Active commutes to school help kids to learn better

By Desirea Agar on October 4, 2019.

Today’s children are 40% less active than they were 30 years ago. One of the ways we can increase their activity levels is by encouraging them to have an active commute to school.

An average Kindergarten student takes 77.6 strides per minute, and they can walk one kilometre in 15-20 minutes. This means that if they walked one kilometre to and from school they could be taking approximately 3,000 more steps per day. In an average school year, this adds up to 276,000 steps your Kindergartener is missing out on by not walking to school.

Students who walk, roll, bike, scoot or take other forms of active transportation to and from school experience many benefits. Getting moving at the start of their day can give them a cutting edge in the classroom. The science is in and it’s proven that movement supports brain health making it easier for them to learn. More specifically, students who exercise before a test show stronger brain function than those who do not, kids who are more active have better attention spans, and active kids are better equipped to get creative (for more information visit participaction.com).

One way that communities have encouraged active transportation to and from school is by starting a walking school bus. A walking school bus is a group of children walking to school with one or more adults. If that sounds simple,it is, and that’s part of the beauty of the walking school bus. It can be as informal as two families taking turns walking their children to school to as structured as a route with meeting points, a timetable and a regularly rotated schedule of trained volunteers.

A variation on the walking school bus is the bicycle train, in which adults supervise children riding their bikes to school. The flexibility of the walking school bus makes it appealing to communities of all sizes with varying needs.

Parents often cite safety issues as one of the primary reasons they are reluctant to allow their children to walk to school. Providing adult supervision may help reduce those worries for families who live within walking or bicycling distance to school.

To learn more about starting a walking school bus, check out walkingschoolbus.org.

Desirea Agar is a Health Promotion Co-ordinator with Alberta Health Services and can be reached at desirea.agar@ahs.ca.