When I was taking my high school gym classes all we ever did was run around and around the track or gym. We never had any goals or fun activities to associate with the endless running of circles.

This month we take a look at how to keep the students interested in running. How you ask? Starting a running club is a great way to get the entire class/ school involved in activity. The number of sources available through the Internet are endless, this month I found one particular website that I took most of the information from: fitnessfinders.net This website had useful information for both parents and students on fitness and nutrition. Check out these ideas and more in this month's section.

Lloyd Gage
PELINKS4U Graduate Assistant

A Hassle-Free Playground

Turn your recess into an exciting fitness program that is fun and creative. (Your playground supervisors will be forever grateful!) Everyone loves the Feelin’ Good Mileage Club!

For kids:
It’s fun!

For playground supervisors:
It channels kids energy
For teachers:
It gets kids ready to learn

For principals:
It’s part of the children’s education process

For parents:
It’s getting their child fit

Everyone’s a Winner!

Years of experience show that the Feelin’ Good Mileage Club:

• Motivates K-6 children to become fit.
• Helps students control body weight.
• Helps students burn off excess energy.
• Improves school performance.
• Builds self-esteem.

Give your school the fitness incentive program that makes everyone a winner. Teachers no longer need to spend valuable time trying to settle arguments after recess. The children return to class ready to learn and eager to show the teacher how much they walked on the playground. You can get your school started for the low price of $54.95, which includes one coordinator’s packet and six teacher packets.

Here’s how

Students walk on the school playground several times each week. The Mile Marker Cards provided in the kit are checked every time a child completes a lap on the course. When recess ends, the students return their cards to their personal files (a copy is provided in the teacher packet). For each five miles a child walks, the child is rewarded. Toe Tokens (bright colored plastic feet to put on shoe laces), certificates and a poster to sign are provided. All awards are designed to be a source of accomplishment, recognition and positive image building.

Children Sharpen Their Skills

By participating in the Feelin’ Good Mileage Club, your students will discover that physical activity can be fun and rewarding. The children will also enhance their scholastic skills! Feelin’ Good Mileage Club schools find that:

• First graders learn fractions (by counting laps).
• Students learn geography by plotting miles on a map.
• Children learn how to set goals, work to achieve goals and evaluate their achievement.

Walking helps develop fitness while building muscles, burning calories, reducing stress and creating good lifetime habits. Best of all, you can now use walking to help make your playground almost hassle-free and a contributing part of your children’s educational process. Besides promoting fitness, you will have a program that makes it easy for your teachers to enhance learning with a minimum amount of time. Educators who use the program say their students end the school year in better physical condition than before they used the Mileage Club.

Children's growing bodies have different nutritional requirements than those of adults. Here are a few ways to adapt the Food Pyramid to meet their needs.

Infants and Toddlers:

Seek your doctor's advice about what to feed your infant and toddler. The Food Pyramid is only designed for children aged two and above.

Preschool Children:

Use the Food Pyramid, but reduce servings to only two-thirds the typical adult size.

Be patient. If your child refuses to eat a food right away, try again a few days later.

Make sure they drink at least two cups of milk a day (or the equivalent in cheese, yogurt, etc.).

Serve healthy snacks such as whole-grain crackers, vegetable sticks and cut-up fruit. Avoid foods that can cause choking such as popcorn, hot dogs, hard candy, carrot sticks and grapes.*

Set a good example. Be active and eat healthy foods.

Elementary Students:

Have your elementary-aged child eat at least the lower number of servings from each food group every day.

Make items such as pop, candy and cookies occasional treats rather than everyday snacks. It's usually counterproductive to completely forbid them, however.

Encourage your children to be active. Many of them gain weight at this time because of their sedentary lifestyle.

Teenagers:

Give them plenty of dairy foods. Teens who have three serving of milk, yogurt and cheese every day and are physically active are less likely to develop osteoporosis later in life.

Encourage teens who are lactose intolerant to drink calcium-fortified fruit juice and soy milk and eat dark-green leafy vegetables and calcium-precipitated tofu.

Have teenage boys eat the highest number of suggested servings from each food group. Encourage highly active girls to do the same.

Present physical activity as THE alternative to repeated dieting. Encourage teens who do diet to eat low-fat foods from each section of the Food Pyramid rather than cutting out some parts of it all together.

Sources:

Using the Food Pyramid: A Resource for Nutrition Educators

Tips for Using the Food Pyramid for Young Children 2 to 6 Years Old

*A few easy adaptations will make most of these foods safe to eat. For example, you can cut the hot dog into strips, cook the carrot (or celery) stick until it is slightly soft before cutting it and cut the grapes into smaller pieces.

Source: Fitnessfinders

A survey of 3,000 certified fitness professionals by the American Council on Exercise yielded this list of the ten most common mistakes people make in the gym:

1. Not stretching enough - especially after aerobic activity while muscles are warm and pliable - to prevent injuries.
2. Lifting more weight than you can handle safely and with good form.
3. Not warming up before an activity.
4. Not cooling down after a workout.
5. Exercising too intensely for a short time, rather than more moderately for longer periods.
6. Not drinking enough water.
7. On a stair machine, turning the intensity so high that you need to lean on the handrails, which is hard on your wrists and back.
8. Not exercising intensely enough to work up a light sweat and get your heart beating in your training zone.
9. Jerking while lifting weights, which can lead to strain and injury.
10. Consuming high-calorie energy bars and sports drinks during moderate workouts. Unless you're exercising more than two hours per day, ACE says, you don't need them.

Source: American Council On Exercise

Here are a few Track and Field activities that you can use in your curriculum to make running a bit more exciting.

Endless Relay- The purpose here being to complete a 400 meter run as quick as possible. Split your class in to teams of 5 students with 1 baton for each team. For the 400 meter relay, place two students at the start and one at each 100 meter segment. Each student runs 100-meters of relay until he/she ends up at his/her original starting position. The entire team will have covered 5 laps, but each student will have only run one lap. Scoring the teams is easy! Use the total number of seconds it took to complete the entire course.

Softball Throw- The purpose of this activity is to throw a softball up and down a field as quickly as possible.

*Place all teams at the back of the field. (Or end zone if using a football field)
*The first person throws the softball as far as possible. *The entire team runs to the ball.
*The second person now throws the ball as far as possible.
*If thrown over the back of the end zone line, the team brings the ball back to the end zone, then throws it back toward the starting line.
*Keep going until the team covers the entire field at least 3 times.
*Scoring: The total number of seconds it took to cover the designated distance.

Long Jump- The purpose of this activity is to jump 100 feet in the least amount of jumps.

*Students line up at the running long jump area. Jumping one after another in order, students try to perform the least number of jumps possible to total 100 feet.
*Each jump is measured to the nearest foot.
*All foot-fault jumps are added to the number of jumps made, but no distance is measured.
*Scoring: Multiply the total number of jumps by ten.

Source: Fitness Finders