Healthy pre teens
Keep Moving
Children and young people aged 5 to 18 need on average at least 60 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity a day across the week to develop movement skills, muscles, and bones.
What counts as a moderate activity?
Moderate-intensity activities will raise your heart rate, make you breathe faster, and feel warmer. One way to tell if you’re walking at a moderate intensity level is if you can still talk, but not sing.
Try to reduce the time spent sitting or lying down and break up long periods of not moving with some activity.
Healthy Schools London
A lot of your time as a child (about 190 days on average) is spent in school and therefore, schools can play an important role in supporting you and your family live healthily. Barnet supports health and wellbeing in schools through programmes looking at food you eat such as Sugar Smart and SMILE to keeping active like Golden Kilometre and Daily Mile.
Our programme for Healthy Early Years London and Healthy Schools London takes a whole school approach to supporting wellbeing of everyone at school.
VegPower
VegPower is a movement that uses marketing techniques to encourage children to eat more vegetables.
The Healthier Families Campaign
The NHS Healthier Families campaign has fun ideas to help you keep moving at home and outdoors. The campaign creates fun ideas like Disney 10-minute shake-ups- helpful to keep you moving during the school holidays.
The campaign also has plenty of recipes and healthy swap ideas to help you eat healthily. There is even a NHS Food Scanner app you can download which is designed to find healthier food options easier and know the sugar content in food and drink.
BACE Holidays
BACE (Barnet, Active, Creative and Engaging) Holidays offers children and young people who receive free school meals to access enriching activities and a healthy lunch over the holiday periods.
Indoor Activities for Kids
We have loads of free indoor games and activities for children so they can still get enough daily physical activity– even when they cannot get outside! Click below to find out more.
Resilient Schools
Resilience in schools is seen when pupils, parents/carers and staff have a greater ability to “bounce back’’ when faced with difficulties so that they can achieve positive outcomes. The Barnet Resilient Schools Programme takes a whole-school approach to promote and build resilience in schools and address mental health concerns early on.
Play safely
Play is a natural part of childhood and contributes to supporting a child’s physical and emotional well-being, growth, learning and development. Playing helps a child make sense of the world around them, working through emotions, experiences and building supportive relationships.
Useful Links:
Look out for local events in Barnet for your family:
- Library events | Barnet Council
- Creative Communities | Barnet Council
- Children's Centres in Barnet | Barnet Council
- Fit & Active Barnet Hub (better.org.uk)
Ideas for play for all your family:
- Baby and toddler play ideas - NHS (www.nhs.uk)
- Resources for early years, primary and secondary schools. | National Literacy Trust
- Tate Kids
Here is some advice on how to stay safe when at play:
