There is a deep connection between the mind and the body and we have seen how movement of the body can influence the development of the brain:
- Movement is good for the brain
- If you only do one thing for your brain, it should be this…
- Physical activity and sports are important for brain development and academic performance
- Physical activity predicts academic achievement in adolescents
- Exercise makes your smarter
- Proprioceptive activities and exercise boosts memory
- Brain breaks with physical activity boosts attention and information processing
Given the strong evidence supporting physical activity, it makes sense to break up our children’s day with brain breaks of physical activity. Here’s an easy way to do just that…
GoNoodle
GoNoodle helps teachers and parents get kids moving with short interactive activities. Desk-side movement helps kids achieve more by keeping them engaged and motivated throughout the day. When kids are able to channel their physical and emotional energy for good, they can improve their performance.
Free for All
GoNoodle was created with K-5 classrooms in mind, but it can also be used at home. It’s free for schools, teachers, educators, and parents anywhere around the world – all you need is a computer, broadband internet connection, and a screen that can be see by all the kids. Create a free GoNoodle account and away you go!
Backed by Research
GoNoodle’s activities are all research-based. Using exercise science and cutting-edge research, all GoNoodle activities have been designed to be healthy for the body, engaging for the attention, and beneficial to the brain in specific ways.
Easy to Use
GoNoodle works fast – it helps children transition from listless to engaged in minutes. It takes no time to setup, has content of a variety of lengths (from 1 minute to 20 minutes), and with just a click of the mouse, you’re ready to go.
Engaging
GoNoodle is designed for long-term engagement. It makes earning minutes of healthy activity a game that kids play together. It motivate kids to stay active with a virtual mascot (or Champ) who grows as the class earns the minutes needed to advance to the next level. With each engagement, children are rewarded as their Champ grows bigger.
It Works
- GoNoodle helps kindergarteners stay focused and energised
- GoNoodle helps to engage less confident learners
- GoNoodle helps students improve classroom behaviour
- Higher fit children have larger brain volumes in the hippocampus and basal ganglia, which relate to superior performance on tasks of memory and cognitive control, compared to their lower fit peers.
- Higher fit children show greater structural integrity in white matter tracts that send speedy signals throughout the brain and help brain regions communicate (more dense, fibrous tracts with greater structural integrity suggest faster and more efficient communication of signals throughout the brain).
- Higher fit and lower fit children also show differences in brain activation during tasks of cognitive control. The brain activation patterns in higher fit children are coupled with superior task performance. These cross-sectional findings are strengthened by a longitudinal intervention study that demonstrated that children randomly assigned to a physical activity intervention group showed greater brain and cognitive benefits compared to a control group.
Brain breaks: Physical activity and brain power intersect (supporting evidence for GoNoodle) –
- Studies consistently demonstrate that physical activity is associated with improved academic achievement, academic behaviors, and cognitive skills.
- Exercise is the single most powerful tool you have to optimize your brain function.
- Over the two-year period, intervention students were significantly more likely to have higher math scores than students in in the control group.
- Evaluation of this program found that participating students nearly doubled their reading scores and their math scores increased 20-fold.
GoNoodle Activities
GoNoodle has activities for:
- guided dancing
- free movement
- stretching
- sports and exercise
- kinesthetic learning
- coordination
- calming
GoNoodle is also perfect for those days when you’re cooped up indoors and you can’t take the kids outside (e.g. haze days).
