Learning & Development - Sports days - On your marks ..

There's more to a good sports day than charging around like headless chickens, balancing bean bags on your nose and playing 'who can fall over the best' inside a smelly old sack.

Yet while a sports day should be more than random play, an over-serious mini-Olympics event where outcome and spectacle are the only determining factors is equally unsuitable for very young children.

Elements of both are useful - but the over-riding aim should be to encourage all children to enjoy and benefit from physical activity, and to do so in a way that can be built upon by parents, teachers, coaches and instructors over subsequent years.

'Not everyone will want to go on to take up sport seriously when they are older, but everyone can enjoy themselves and get used to what it's like to take part in physical activity,' says Alison Winship, head of Kids 1st Wansbeck, in Northumberland, who recently organised a sports day.

At Oulton Primary School in Leeds, early years leader Kate Brown agrees that a mixture of short- and long-term considerations should play a part when choosing activities. 'Children need to have fun and play games that are simple to understand, but the activities also need to get children used to competing and performing skills,' she says.

There is no one right way to organise a sports day. For Ms Brown the approach is a traditional one, organising the sort of races that keep children active throughout and parents happy as spectators. Alison Winship prefers to set up throwing, running and shooting zones around which the children move in groups, so that a range of activities are going on simultaneously. 'Not everyone is good at or likes to run, so you need to cater for everyone's abilities and tastes,' she says.

Liz Scoular, who focuses on early years development for the Youth Sport Trust, agrees with the idea of zones or stations, but says she would like to see a wider range of non-traditional activities incorporated within sports days. 'If you are looking to develop children long-term, there are all sorts of different activities that can introduce them to balance, co-ordination, sending, receiving and moving.'

Ms Scoular has developed a resource called 'Start to Play', which includes a range of materials and activity ideas that could form the basis of a sports day. 'Children can use balls of different shapes, sizes and textures, try to hit a ball with a small bat, aim at targets or move in and out of cones, while someone records how long they take or cheers them when they finish.'

This particular approach lends itself well to involving parents, who can keep score, help run a station or even take part in activities with their children. So, for example, in a running activity, the parent rolls a big dice with colours rather than numbers, and the child runs to a cone of that colour and back again before taking their own turn to roll and send the parent on their way. Parents can roll a ball for their child to hit, or show them how to aim a bean bag at a target.

While Ms Brown sees a traditional sports day as perhaps the most effective way of getting large numbers of parents to the school as spectators, Ms Winship uses the day to get key physical activity messages across to both children and parents. She explains, 'We employed a local physical activity consultant to speak to parents about incorporating regular physical activity and healthy eating into a child's normal routine.'

Competition may not be a popular word in an educational system that values collaboration and togetherness, but the fact remains that it is an inevitable part of life. 'Children are naturally competitive and will usually make up games where there is a winner,' says Ms Scoular. 'What is important is that effort, enjoyment and progress are also celebrated, so that children don't learn to think that winning is the only way to be successful and achieve.'

Ms Winship adds, 'Children need to learn that not everyone can be the best at everything, but that taking part in physical activity, developing healthy lifestyles and just enjoying themselves is good for you - so in reality, everyone wins!'

Organisers of sports day need to be flexible, think about what all children need to get involved in to enjoy and learn from physical activity, and devise a format in which parents can both spectate and interact. With the right mix of competition, play and development, a well-run sports days could have a significant impact on children's physical activity and healthy living choices for years to come.

FURTHER INFORMATION

http://www.youthsporttrust.org/page/playzone/index.html

Kids 1st Day Nurseries, www.kidsfirst.net