BATH TOWNSHIP — For Bath Elementary Second Grade Teacher Rachel Foust, the GoNoodle program provided a way to gets children moving but also helping them spend extra energy so they can focus more on learning.
“Your body needs to be moving. You’re not going think if you don’t have oxygen to your brain so when you get up and moving, your heart is pumping, you get more oxygen to all parts of your body including your brain and you’re going to think better,” Foust said.
Besides using GoNoodle to improve the health of children, Foust said she uses it to make teaching vocabulary or spelling lessons fun while exercising.
GoNoodle helps children get rid of extra energy that distracts them from learning. Foust includes up to 20 minutes each day into two sessions.
Nearly 18,000 elementary school students in Allen, Auglaize and Putnam counties are participating in the initiative to get moving and improve their health through the GoNoodle program. They have already logged 365,000 minutes of activity including 40,000 of that at Bath Elementary School.
St. Rita’s Health Partners and Mercy Health are sponsoring the local initiatives in schools as a way to improve the overall health of the community starting with the children, said Amy Marcum, the vice president of mission and values integration at St. Rita’s.
“We recognize to improve health in this community we have to go beyond our facility walls,” Marcum said.
The partnership was launched at Bath Elementary School on Friday, Marcum said. She called it “a creative way” to introduce movement into the lives of children while they learn.
“It’s something many teachers do do every day and make it part of their routine,” she said.
Chaye Spector, the senior director of partner management for GoNoodle, said the partnership with St. Rita’s and Mercy Health provided a chance to expand the program for elementary school children in the region.
Spector led the class in exercise sessions up to eight minutes Friday as children jumped up and down.
“It takes my breath away no matter how many times I see it. It’s just as amazing as the first time I’ve ever done this,” Spector said.
The program also includes a lesson on calming children down and helping them relieve stress. GoNoodle has been around for three years and was established to improve the health of children in hopes of developing healthy habits that last a lifetime, Spector said.
.neFileBlock {
margin-bottom: 20px;
}
.neFileBlock p {
margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
}
.neFileBlock .neFile {
border-bottom: 1px dotted #aaa;
padding-bottom: 5px;
padding-top: 10px;
}
.neFileBlock .neCaption {
font-size: 85%;
}
