Playing sport and having fun, too
Children learn skills
You know it’s been a good outing for the kids if some of them are asleep in the bus on the way home.
Last Tuesday, Athletics New Zealand and New Zealand Post hosted more than 600 children aged 4 to 7 at the ASB Sports Centre in Wellington for the Get Set Go Pathways to Sporting Success programme.
Porirua and Tawa schools that attended were St Theresa’s, Cannons Creek, Pukerua Bay, Paremata, Windley and Hampton Hill.
Cannons Creek School teacher Duncan Murray said his 25 children thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to develop skills that included the basics of running, jumping, kicking and throwing.
‘‘ They had a wonderful day learning skills through playing games,’’ he said.
‘‘ The enthusiastic way it’s delivered inspires all children in our junior school and makes it pretty hard not to like.’’
Murray said the way the activities were set up at the sports centre meant there was no queuing or waiting, just constant fun.
‘‘There was no down-time; it was full-on.
‘‘We had at least six kids sleeping in the bus on the way back to Porirua, so what does that say?’’
Murray said the Get Set Go programme is free for schools to run and he encouraged other schools to give it a trial.
Teachers and
coaches
are provided with training and assessment tools to run it at their schools.
Get Set Go Manager Karen Laurie said the goal was to have every child confident in the basic skills so they were able to enjoy all sports and have an active lifestyle.
‘‘Concentrating on any one particular sport at this age is not the best way to develop children’s sports skills for later on in life,’’ she said.
‘‘It’s far better to teach a broad range of basic sports skills they will need to pursue whichever sports activity they choose.’’