Weatherly Area elementary and middle school students participated in ACES (All Children Exercise Simultaneously) Day Wednesday afternoon.

A physical education teacher began the initiative in the 1980s to encourage students to get more physically active, said Rebekah McFadden, school nurse, who helped ready students for a workout led by exercise physiologists Joe Stanavage and Janet Brown from the Lehigh Valley Health Network.

Stanavage, who works at the gym at the network’s Health and Wellness Center in Hazle Township, said they’ve been participating in the event for three years and it’s a great opportunity to get out into the community and showcase what they do.

Weatherly Area seniors also talked to the younger students about getting active and trying out for school sports, encouraging them to try as many as they could.

The program usually runs a half-hour to an hour, and gets the kids excited about getting moving, Stanavage said. And the younger kids, who were already bopping around the gym while adjusting themselves arms-length apart, really moved when the work began.

Students in pre-kindergarten to fifth grade took part in one session, while students in sixth to eighth worked out in another.