With their shorter legs, the first-graders that won a pedometer challenge at Oakland Elementary School on Friday may have had an unfair advantage over their teacher-parent challengers.

Anne McCoy, the school’s physical education teacher, said fellow educator Amy Sing’s class won a berth to put the grownups through their paces last week.

During physical education, each class had vied for the honor by tallying their steps with a pedometer, with Sing’s class coming up trumps.

Though there was no apparent sledging or bad sportsmanship, Friday’s headliner — held in the gymnasium before the rest of the school during Oakland Elementary’s third annual Fitness and Nutrition Across Virginia Day — was not for the fainthearted.

The first-graders gritted teach as they sped around the obstacle course, collectively accruing as many steps as possible, and, during their turn, the teachers and parents appeared no less intent on taking home the glory.

In the final reckoning, which was 7,634 steps against 5,547 steps, that glory went to the children in flying colors.

The day of activity also included an anti-smoking message delivered by 14 nursing students from Southampton Memorial Hospital, who worked with Oakland Elementary nurse Mary Powell.

“We did a game, then we did an experiment showing tar getting into their lungs,” Powell said.

The day also included a “responses to sugar” experiment with Suffolk Partnership for a Healthy Community.

The partnership program manager for Healthy People Healthy Suffolk, Jett Johnson, used sports drinks and sodas to show the children how what may seem an innocuous beverage can actually do them harm

“They were pretty wowed by knowing how much sugar was in each drink,” Johnson said.

Also, McCoy said, the nurses-in-training and parent volunteers took healthy snacks around classrooms, and teacher’s assistants were celebrated with a special game that involved students painting their portraits.

“At the end (of the day), we have a mob dance to ‘The Sid Shuffle’ from ‘Ice Age 4,’” she added.

Johnson said he and his colleagues at the nonprofit have been talking about focusing more on youth. “So we are trying to get into as many schools as we can,” he said.

Timothy Oglesby, a parent on the teacher-parent pedometer challenge team whose daughter Destini Oglesby is in kindergarten, praised the school’s initiative.

“It’s a wonderful thing for the kids to get out here, especially as far as them getting physical education, not just being in class,” he said.