The Old Borough NS has been taking part in the Active School Flag initiative 'Skip Around Europe' since March 31st. All classes, from Junior Infants to 6th Class, have been taking part in this four week skipping initiative.

Each day, the classes went out to the yard and took part in a few minutes of skipping. Each skip counted as 1 kilometre. Each class chose a destination in Europe to skip to using the handy resources chart included with the initiative. Each child counted their skips, these got added to a class total, and they then checked to see if they reached their destinations for the day. Some classes were skipping all the way to their destination countries and back! 

Not only is skipping a very fun activity, there are also many benefits that we could see taking part in this initiative. Firstly, the children all engaged in physical activity every day. It is important that every child gets 60 minutes of exercise at least a day. This helped towards that goal. Secondly, the children seemed much more focused and concentrated better in class after their exercise. There is no denying that exercise has a very important role in improving learning outcomes. Thirdly, the children learned about different places around Europe, showing the excellent integration links across the subjects. This initiative also encouraged some children to develop their leadership skills as they organised their class resources, collected their totals, added them up, and recorded them on the chart each day. The children in 5th and 6th even did a project on the benefits of skipping and this initiative. 

We loved the 'Skip Around Europe' Challenge and are very grateful to Active School flag for giving us 30 beautiful new skipping ropes to help us to achieve our goals. It has been really wonderful to see the children improving their skipping skills and engaging in fun, healthy activities on the yard each day.