Thousands of Suffolk primary school children put their best foot forward and walked to and from school last week (5-9th October) as part of National Walk to School Week.

To support their efforts Suffolk’s Most Active County programme developed, produced and distributed special Keep Moving Suffolk Walking Challenge resources to 104 Suffolk primary schools catering for over 25,000 children.

The fun and engaging resources included a special classroom wallchart with accompanying daily reward stickers for each child and an activity book for every child in the school to help animate their journey to and from school.

Initial feedback from participating schools showed that the resources were highly valued by teachers and pupils alike with 97% of participating schools rating them as good or very good.

Teachers comments included ‘The resources were a great way to engage the children’, ‘Pupils loved the activity card’ and ‘The walk to school resources definitely encouraged pupils to walk to school.’

 The Albert Pye and Ravensmere Schools Federation reported that during the week their pupils completed a total of 1409 journeys with 78% of pupils walking to school compared to a national average of 51%.

Meanwhile, St Gregory Primary School in Sudbury recorded pupils “talking about walking with their families, friends and pets. They’ve been talking about other ways to keep healthy too, like eating fruit and vegetables, drinking water and milk, sleeping and choosing the right clothes for the weather”.

Although Walk to School Week has passed the Keep Moving Suffolk activity books are still available for download here