Organizers of the 2025 Canada Summer Games have announced the official launch of a teaching resource to help kids in grades K-9 learn about the benefits of physical activity and sport.
The Catch the Spirit Program was originally designed and launched in 2003.
A revamped version of the program, sponsored by Hebron, will begin in classrooms across the province, and the country, in September.
It includes five themes: arts and culture, goal-setting and leadership, healthy living and sport, official languages of Canada, and unifying Canada.
Samantha Squires, a Grade 3 teacher at Mary Queen of the World, had a Games representative come to her classroom last year with the program and she says it was a big hit.
She says several of her kids who are usually quiet and introverted were “jumping out of their seats” to participate.
Squires says it was great to see some of the kids come out of their shells, adding at one point she had tears in her eyes watching it happen.
Squires says it was also “heartwarming” to see several new Canadians in her class, whose first language was not English, become “immersed” in the program.