Reaching for the stars – sports in the park, sleeping better and eating parsnips

Sports in the park, sleeping better and eating parsnips are just some of the outcomes children have told us about as a result of taking part in our Star Chart Challenge.

Over the holidays, hundreds of children aimed to achieve at least 30 physical activity and healthy living stars in order to have fun, keep active and try new things. Families were provided with lots of ideas in a free eBook and downloadable reward chart.

Children and their families took part in over 70 different activities from football, basketball and rugby through to climbing, rollerskating and cyclocross (pictured in the word cloud image above). They tried a variety of different fruits and vegetables and positive adjustments to their family lives. One pre-schooler reported: “I walked around the walls of Chester, walked around Chester Zoo, walked up to the cliffs at Loggerheads country park, made a snowman and had a snowball fight, scootered to the park, went swimming, knocked down the snowman and collected sticks to make it into a snow hedgehog. And, I tried a parsnip on Christmas day!” (Adam B., aged 4)

Some of the children even recorded an achievement of over 90 stars in just a two week period.

Parents have been delighted with the outcomes, too:

“We had good fun over the holidays working hard to earn stars. This was a brilliant idea and we enjoyed finding different ways to fill in our chart. We even started filling in a second chart and Ashley has become very helpful around the house! Thank you.”
Caroline H.

“Many, many thanks for the Star Chart Challenge. What a fab idea! We were having great trouble getting our three year old daughter to sleep. My son was filling some stars in when he suggested that Lottie would be able to colour in five stars if she went to bed without a fuss and with no waking up. It worked! The next evening she got four stars, then three and we haven’t looked back since. Thanks from us all for the now very peaceful nights.”
Emma A.

As touched upon in our previous blog post, research suggests that children are ‘primarily motivated by pleasure, play and the sheer joy of movement’, so providing more opportunities to experience these (like the Star Chart Challenge) can help to cement positive habits that inspire the whole family.

The Star Chart Challenge resources are free to everyone and can be downloaded on our free resources page.

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The Star Chart Challenge activities word cloud was created using WordItOut and can be found at: http://worditout.com/word-cloud/672258

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