Let’s Jump!, a National Geographic Kids movement to promote active, healthy life styles for kids, joined with Michelle Obama October 11-12th in an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for most people doing jumping jacks. Participants had a 24 hour window to preform, document, and submit proof of one full minute of jumping jacks in order to be counted towards the record. It will require over 20,000 submissions to set a new world record and final results will still take a few weeks to be tabulated. From what we have seen so far, the event was quite successful; it connected students, clubs, sport teams and friends across the world to compete for a common goal. This week’s Five for Friday celebrates an amazing effort in childhood health and education by bringing you five highlights from the event!
1. Michelle Obama‘s commitment to the event and her participation! Not to mention the additional 500 local school children who joined her on the White House lawn. Michelle was quoted saying, “As a first lady I get to do a lot of cool things, but this is really exciting. I never thought in my entire life I would be setting a Guinness World Record!” See more coverage on the event from The White House Blog.
2. Adorable kindergartners from Phillips Elementary School doing jumping jacks and their reactions to the Let’s Jump event:
- “Jumping Jacks were ok, but it’d be awesome to be in the Guinness World Records Book!”
- “I think doing jumping jacks after lunch was really fun! I’m usually so tired after lunch, but now I’m really awake.”
- “I really liked doing it with my whole class. Even Ms. Sykes jumped with us!”
3. The event resulted in more than 350 media hits from major news outlets across the nation and around the world including: NBC, FOX, ABC, CBS, TIME, NPR, USA Today, The Washington Post, and more! Celebrities such as U.S. figure skater Michelle Kwan and NBC weather man Al Roker helped host the White House event!
4. National Geographic Society headquarters (Washington D.C.) had 335 jumpers participate in Let’s Jump in an all-office event. It was fantastic!
5. We might just break a Guinness World Record! Finally results will be announced within a couple of weeks.
A side note: Join us in the 2011 National Geographic Education Blog-a-thon!
“Adventure in your community” is the theme of this year’s Geography
Awareness Week, and we are getting in the spirit by exploring new
formats for the annual blog-a-thon. Starting now, we will be accepting
any geography-related blog posts that honor Geography Awareness Week. In
addition to traditional forms of written blog pieces, we will also
accept submissions in the form of: poems, scanned art of all types,
relevant photographs, video clips, academic papers, or even your
favorite geography homework assignments! You can e-mail us to express
your interest at NatGeoEd@ngs.org — just let us know what you have in
mind and we will be on the look-out for your work. Geography is in
everything we do, see, and experience, so let your imagination run wild!
–Julia from My Wonderful World