The Grand défi Pierre Lavoie’s mission is to encourage young people to adopt healthy life habits. To achieve its goal, the Grand défi has partnered with childcare centres to help kids make healthier choices in their everyday lives, to build habits that will become the norm for future generations.
The Energy Cubes Challenge is a great way to get families to be active and team-up with their daycare establishment towards a healthier lifestyle!
Is your child’s childcare centre participating in the Energy Cubes Challenge ? Your involvement has a big influence on how your child does with the challenge. Here’s what you can do to help:
Any group or individual activity that requires physical exertion or raises the heart rate counts toward the accumulation of Energy Cubes. Examples include tricycle, ball games, walking, obstacle courses, hoop games, skill games, soccer, hockey, playing on swings, mini-basketball, jump rope, pool games, snowshoeing, dancing, aerobics, gymnastics, active video games such as Wii Fit and Kinect.
Group or individual activities requiring little physical exertion are not counted toward the accumulation of Energy Cubes. These include passive video games, card or board games, water games, playing with dolls, playing with trucks, static games in the sandbox, etc.
The activity must be done with the participating child in order to count as an Energy Cube collecting activity. Each immediate family member earns 1 energy cube for every 15 minutes of physical activity performed with the child.
Please note: Trainers, sports team members, extended family members (uncles, aunts, godfathers, godmothers, etc.), pets (!) and others cannot accumulate Energy Cubes. They are, however, welcome to move to encourage children in their challenge.
Hard versions of the Child Logbook will be sent directly (while supplies last) to participating childcares, which will then be in charge of distributing them to the kids. For kids without a hard copy of the logbook, a condensed version is available in the Toolbox section of our website. Childcare centres and parents can download the logbook and print it out.
The Child logbook is used for activities done at home. Energy Cubes accumulated at the childcare centre are compiled on the group leader’s tally sheet. On a weekly basis, the group leader adds up the Energy Cubes accumulated by their group (children’s logbooks) and sends the totals to the challenge leader for the Energy Cubes Challenge at the childcare centre.
Calculating the average number of Energy Cubes per child makes it possible to compare results between participating daycares—which regularly compile their results online using the same system—regardless of the number of children in the childcare centre.
Average number of Cubes per child:
Total number of Cubes accumulated by your childcare centre ÷ Total number of children in your childcare centre
One childcare centre per administrative region (17) will be drawn at random.
Winners will be chosen based on their participation AND through a random draw, in the following way:
| Average energy cubes per child | Entries |
| 38 to 75 energy cubes | 1 entry (bronze cube) |
| 76 to 149 energy cubes | 2 entries (silver cube) |
| Over 150 energy cubes | 3 entries (gold cube) |
Regional-level winning childcare centres will receive a cube filled with objects that promote physical activity and motor skills in children.
We rely on the honesty of those in charge at each daycare to communicate their results in a fair and impartial way. Should there be any doubt, the organizers of the Grand défi could ask for a verification in due form.
