1. Did you know that being active can help you in school? Active kids score better on tests and have better grades than their inactive friends. For many kids, the easiest way to become more active is to join a sports team or club at school. If you like a sport, go for it! Or if you’d rather take a more low-key approach to getting active—maybe running up and down a basketball court isn’t your thing—there are other ways to get active. The easiest way? If you have recess, make it count. Next time your class goes outside for recess, try to do 15 or 20 minutes of an activity. Challenge your friends to a football game, race friends from one end of the playground to another, play hopscotch, or just take a nice walk with a friend. The activity and fresh air can magically clear your head before the next class!

2. Schools all across America have stopped requiring gym class. As a result, some kids aren’t getting even a half-hour of movement! The older students get, the less active they become. The shocking news is that only 1 in 4 high school students participate in a daily gym class. Get your school involved in better lifelong fitness: Ask your school principal to open the school before or after school hours or during vacations so that you and other kids can stay active. Help organize competitive and non-competitive activities for both parents and kids during the before- and after-school hours. Activities could include walking clubs, in-line skating, jumping rope, water aerobics, simple gymnastics, or swimming. As a big kick-off to the new fitness hours, hold an activity fair in the school gym where kids and parents sign up together for the different activities. The more fun and festive, the better!

3. Get active for a cause. From Maine to Florida, kids are jumping rope to raise money and help save lives. Jump Rope for Heart is just one program you can start in your own school. Ask your teacher to help your school join in this fund-raising activity. While you get more active, you’ll raise money for medical research to stop heart disease and stroke. And if jumping is your thing, check this out. Elementary students at 4,000 British schools made an impact on the Earth. At 11:00 a.m. on their second day back to school, all of the students jumped at once to see if the ground would shake. The kids say they didn’t feel the Earth move, but scientists measuring the ground’s movement underground expected a 1.0 or less on the Richter scale, a scale that measures the size of earthquakes. A 1.0 is pretty low—a major earthquake registers around a 7.0—but a small measure shows that even little kids working together can make a difference.

1. "Get Out Spoke’n!" That’s the motto of the League of American Bicyclists, who want to help make your town or city bicycle friendly. It may seem like a big job— creating more bicycle parking, holding clinics for bicycle safety, recognizing May as National Bicycle Month—but even achieving one task will make a difference! If it’s safer to bike, more people will do it. Visit the "Get Out Spoke’n" Web site for more information. Click here, and then scroll to the section "How Bike Friendly is your community?" (7th on list of 9 choices).

2. Offer a get-up-and-go suggestion for your school band or sports team’s next fundraiser. Are you tired of selling candy bars every year to raise money? (And doesn’t it seem a little odd that a sports team is selling junk food??) Do your neighbors and friends a favor. Try selling low-priced sports gear instead of candy. It’s a great way to promote getting active and is a much healthier choice for everyone. Ask your bandleader or coach to give this option a try.

3. Talk with your parents, teachers, Scout troops, or another group about making your community a safer place to walk, run, and bicycle. The truth is, many people don’t get out and move their bodies because they are afraid of dogs, cracked sidewalks, unsafe sections of town, or too much traffic. Go to The National Safety Council to figure out how "walkable" your community is. They gives lots of help in their Partnership for a Walkable American program.

Did you know that almost half of the kids in Great Britain get to school by car? That’s a lot of pollution from a lot of cars. But when the kids were asked how they wanted to get to school, 76 of every 100 kids said they wanted to walk or cycle. Let’s get walking, then—in Great Britain, the United States, France, Germany, everywhere! Get involved in the "Kids Walk-to-School" program sponsored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The program offers a step-by-step (no pun intended) checklist, safety tips, and ways to make the walk to school more fun and get your community involved.