National School Sports Week (NSSW) starts today! Run in association with the Youth Sport Trust, it’s a brilliant opportunity to celebrate movement, participation and the joy of being active. But with the end of term fast approaching, we know many schools are looking for ideas that are quick to organise, easy to deliver and flexible enough to fit around a busy timetable.
That’s exactly why we created our ‘Move Mission’ Bingo challenge.
Move Mission Bingo:
Move Mission Bingo is a simple whole class challenge designed to help children complete short daily movement activities across the week. Classes work through their bingo grid to earn certificates and/or whole school rewards.
It’s designed to be low prep, flexible and fun, making it ideal for National School Sports Week when you want to celebrate movement without adding lots of extra planning to your week. The activities are short, simple and easy to adapt. It can be used as a burst of movement between lessons, a morning energiser, an after lunch reset or an end of the day blast.
Just as importantly, it helps children build active minutes in a fun and achievable way. These short movement opportunities can boost energy, support wellbeing, improve focus and help children feel successful through shared class goals and celebration.
Many of the activities within Move Mission Bingo are built around Fundamental Movement Skills (FMS), the building blocks of physical development. These core skills help children move with confidence and competence and underpin participation in a wide range of physical activities, games and sports.
By developing skills such as balancing, jumping, running, hopping, throwing, catching and coordination, children are better prepared to take part in more complex movements and activities as they grow. Giving pupils regular opportunities to practise these skills, even in short bursts across the school day, can make a real difference to their physical confidence and competence.
Keep the momentum going into the summer holidays:
NSSW is a brilliant celebration of school sport and physical activity, but it also comes at a time when many children are about to lose some of their regular opportunities to move. Once term ends, PE lessons, playtime routines and daily movement breaks often disappear, and for some families that can mean activity levels drop significantly over the summer holidays.
That’s why it’s a great time to signpost families to simple ways of staying active at home.
Before your pupils head off for the summer, make sure your school community knows about our Active Families area. It’s packed with simple ideas to help children stay active at home and spend quality time moving with parents, carers, siblings and family members.
The best part? It’s completely free to access, even for schools who do not have a subscription. Families can access it by visiting Get Set 4 Education, clicking Home Learning and then heading to Active Families.
These activities are a great way to encourage children to move more, spend less time on screens and enjoy active time together as a family. They also create opportunities for communication, teamwork and shared fun, all while helping children build those all important active minutes over the summer break.
Make it easy for families to get involved:
To make sharing even easier, we also have a ready made parent letter that schools can send home or upload to their online learning platform, newsletter or parent communication app. It’s a quick way to point families towards Active Families before the summer holidays begin.
If you’d like to keep the motivation going over the summer, families could also use our August Active Calendar to record how active they’ve been. It’s a simple way to encourage children to keep moving, celebrate consistency and reflect on how they’re building activity into their holiday routines. It’s also a lovely way for children to return to school in September ready to talk about how they stayed active over the summer.
National School Sports Week is a brilliant chance to get children moving, and Move Mission Bingo is an easy way to join in. Before the summer break, don’t forget to share our free Active Families resources with parents and carers too, helping children stay active, build confidence and enjoy moving at home over the holidays.
