Early Moves dance initiative widens activity choices for primary school children and teachers.

A project is being piloted in the Inverness and Nairn areas to offer a new way to be active in primary school.

The initiative called “Early Moves” is aimed at pupils in pre-school nursery through to Primary 3 and is being coordinated by The Highland Council’s Education, Culture and Sport Service.

The arts in education initiative has been developed specifically to increase physical activity in early years education settings in the Highlands while at the same time  promoting cross curricular working.

A key element of Early Moves is that practical Continuous Professional Development in dance delivery will be provided for Education staff at participating classes. In consultation with teachers, a Dance Worker will then develop an Early Moves resource pack, including lesson plans, activity outlines and a music CD. The resource pack will enable early years’ staff to deliver dance in the curriculum without the support of a specialist dancer. The resource pack will then be delivered to all Highland Council early years’ centres throughout the Highlands.

Councillor Bill Fernie, Chairman of The Highland Council’s Education, Culture and Sport Committee said: “Children entering education should have the best possible start in life. Through Early Moves we are trying to reduce the occurrences of Highland children who start school overweight and hopefully continue their schooling with healthy active lifestyles.”

Early Moves started in January 2010 with pupils at Rosebank and Millbank Primaries in Nairn and the initiative comes to Cradlehall and Duncan Forbes Primaries, Inverness in February. A dance worker is providing dance activities for nursery to P3 pupils, devised to increase physical activity. In addition, the activities will be themed to link the experiences and outcomes within the Curriculum for Excellence in Expressive Arts with Literacy, Maths and Health and Wellbeing.