Promoting Wellness in Schools with Apps

Promoting wellness in schools can be done by encouraging a healthy lifestyle and physical activity with apps. We’ve got recommended apps to help incorporate brain breaks into your school day, teach kids about nutrition, utilize fitness trackers. We also have a few tips on how to help students set health and wellness goals for themselves.

Why Promote Wellness in School?

By teaching students how to incorporate wellness into their school day, they can develop much more holistic, sustainable ideas and habits. These apps can be used in a physical education classroom, during small breaks in other classes, or recommended by the school to be used by students at home.

Brain Breaks Apps

Get Moving

GoNoodle seeks to bring lessons around personal and community wellness, mental and physical health, and bring those lessons to elementary school kids in ways that are native, fun, exploratory, and highlight their unique, natural epicness.

vsGRAPHICS has over 100 videos of varying lengths designed for and featuring kids.

Foster Calm and Mindfulness

Calm puts the tools to achieve mindfulness in your back pocket with guided meditations, soothing music, and daily guided programs designed to fit into your lifestyle in practical ways.

Super Stretch Yoga is a fun, interactive yoga app created for kids, used by the whole family!

Pomodoro apps include the simplistic web-based Pomodor, Forest for mobile, or organization apps with pomodoro features such as Engross or Pomello set within Trello. Pomodoro timers are promoting wellness in schools by guiding students towards a productive balance between work and breaks. To complete one Pomodoro cycle:

Set a timer for 25 minutes and work diligently until it’s up
Take a 5 minute break
Repeat the process three more times
Finally, take a 15-30 minute break

Nutrition App

My Food helps kids gain clever knowledge and learn interesting facts about food classifications, nutrition and how to cultivate herbs in a fun way!

Wello creates a virtual companion for parents and children alike, providing accurate nutritional information.

Fitness Apps

Fitness Trackers

ZRX has the popular and imaginitive fitness adventures Zombies, Run!, Marvel Move and Venture.

My Fitness Pal is an all-in-one food, exercise, and calorie tracker.

Nike Training Club will make your fitness habits stick with quicker options, goal-setting tools, and new content daily.

Apple Fitness Plus is the perfect tool for those who have an Apple watch.

Cardio & Light Workouts

Unruly Spats Your trusted partner for K-8 computer science programs that combines coding and active play for every student in your school!

Swork-It Kids has a variety of student-led workouts designed to supplement movement and physical activity for grades Pre-K through 12.

Fitocracy has all the features of a fitness tracker, while also allowing you earn points and badges.

Skipping Skills is a convenient, fun, and effective way to learn jump rope skills.

7-minute Workout The researchers have put together 12 exercises that can be performed in seven minutes but achieve the equivalent of an hour’s workout.

PopSugar Fitness and MadFit focus on incorporating popular music into their workouts.

Glo has 18 Yoga styles and 90+ Programs created for beginner, intermediate, and advanced practices.

Yoga for Beginners Yoga is a great way to relax and melt the stress away, and this is the perfect app to help you get started.

Strength & Conditioning

PLT4M believes the most important thing about a strength and conditioning app is that it makes life easier, not harder. The best apps know how to balance cutting-edge technology with simplicity.

Blogilates is complete with free workouts, challenges, a social community, and a place to log your fitness and wellness journey.

Sweat Deck is the deck of cards workout that will help you mix up your fitness routine with an endless combination of simple & effective workouts!

Helping Students Set Wellness Goals

Student learning goals provide a clear and measurable target for students to achieve. They help students focus on what they need to learn and encourage them to take ownership of their learning. Thus, understanding the importance of student learning goals is crucial for both students and teachers.

Here are some factors to make sure students consider:

Ask students to consider what they want to achieve by using this app. Do they want to get moving more, train for a certain sport, foster calm, learn about nutrition, or something else?
How much class time are you willing to dedicate to this venture? How much further personal time are students going to commit to?
Do they want to complete workouts alone, or with a buddy( or two)?
How do they intend to track their progress?
Is the school or students willing to supply a budget for this venture, or do you need to stick with free apps?

One effective method for creating student learning goals is to use the SMART methodology. SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. When creating these goals, it’s essential to ensure they are specific enough to provide clear direction to students, measurable, achievable within a set timeframe, relevant to student needs, and time-bound to make sure the venture doesn’t get too overwhelming. Once the time is up, students can re-evaluate what’s working and what isn’t.

With all the apps out there today, promoting wellness in schools is easier than you think!