Active for Life Champions: Andrea Carey and PISE

Parents often wonder how to start their children in sports. What’s the right age? What kinds of activities are best for kids just starting out?

Victoria’s Pacific Institute for Sport Excellence (PISE) has a great answer.

PISE runs a program for kids called the ABC’s of Physical Literacy. It’s fun, it’s affordable and because it happens on Saturday mornings, it easily fits into busy family schedules. There are three levels:

• Active Start: 3 – 4 years
  Simple, fun games introduce children to basic movement skills such as throwing, running, jumping, kicking and catching.
• Active ABCs: 5 – 7 years
  The basic movement skills are further developed. More games and sports skills are added, and instructors provide extra help to any children who might have missed learning the basics when they were smaller.
• Active Sport: 8 – 10 years
  Helps kids refine their basic ABCs into specific sport skills that can be used for soccer, basketball, volleyball, hockey, tennis and a host of other sports.

Fun is the focus of PISE’s multi-sport program and it helps kids discover the sports and activities they like. In the process, it develops their physical literacy so they can join other sports and activities with confidence as they get older.

Andrea Carey is the program director at PISE. She wants to see more programming like this in Canada and is already reaching out to schools and recreation centres with a special offer: take the PISE lesson plans and course outlines and use them to offer your own physical literacy programs in your community.

Contact Andrea at 250-220-2511 or at PISE to learn more. Or ask your local rec centre to take the opportunity to offer their own ABCs program.

The goal is a country where fun, affordable physical literacy programs are available everywhere. And where parents can rest easy knowing that their children are learning the skills and gaining the confidence they need to be active for life.