Forget climbing a wall for just physical fitness.

New horizontal climbing walls that are coming to the Natrona County School District will challenge students both physically and mentally.

Although the walls are designed to encourage physical activity, Kristin Underwood, Lifetime Fitness Physical Education Grant coordinator, said they can be incorporated into the classroom and teach children a variety of skills.

"It incorporates teamwork through activity," she said. "Students learn personal and social skills. They're also building muscle and strengthening their endurance."

The funding for the walls will come from a federal grant the district already has, and they're expected to cost less than $200,000.

Although the school board recently awarded the work to Everlast Climbing Industries, of Minnesota, the bid is now on hold, Underwood said, declining to elaborate further on it. However, she expected the work to proceed and the walls to be installed by the end of the school year.

Once the work starts, almost all the schools will get one of the walls. CY Junior High School won't get one immediately but will once a new building is finished, Underwood said.

"They're going in at every elementary that can hold them and at every secondary school," she said.

Teachers, who will receive training on how to use the walls, can use them to teach lessons outside a typical classroom.

"Kids can spell letters across the wall," Underwood said of the elementary school students. "They can also do math problems."

The walls are magnetic, which means teachers can use magnetic letters and numbers to incorporate their lessons into the climbing walls. Being a horizontal wall rather than a vertical wall also gives the students more opportunity to learn and play together.

"This allows the opportunity for more kids to be on the wall at the same time," Underwood said. "More kids can be active at the same time."

The length of the climbing walls will vary depending on the length of the walls at the different schools. The walls won't be more than eight feet high for the elementary school students and not more than 10 feet high for the secondary students, Underwood said. Anything higher would require safety ropes and other devices.

The district's walls will come with a built-in safety feature of their own. Each wall will have a six-foot, three-inch mat that folds down and protects students when they're using it, Underwood said. The mats are folded back up and against the walls when not in use which prevents students from using the new exercise equipment unsupervised.

With obesity rates climbing among youngsters, Underwood said she wanted to incorporate the walls into the curriculum as fun way for children to learn and get interested in physical fitness.

Physical education is more than just participating in an activity, Underwood said. It's about teaching students the importance of exercise and how to live a healthy life. That's important because of the increase in the obesity rates among children.

"Physical activity for our kids is so important because our obesity crisis is so high," Underwood said.

National figures show the obesity problem has risen among children since the 1970s, information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Web site indicated. About 16 percent of children and teens between the ages of 6 and 19 are considered obese, recent data indicated.

Overweight children are more likely to be obese as adults and can develop several diseases including diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and cardiovascular disease, the CDC indicated.

Contact reporter Aimee Tabor at (307) 266-0593 or at aimee.tabor@casperstartribune.net.