Children hear about and feel our pain.......

The Jump Rope For Heart pamphlets have all been sent home and within the physical education class we have talked about this fundraising effort. During each class we talked about the spirit of fundraising, the nature of heart disease in language that they, hopefully, might understand and discussed the"how to" of doing the fundraising. We emphasized safety in asking only family and close friends and helped them to understand that not all people can give money for many of their own personal reasons. We have highlighted our appreciation of their effort and willingness to try to help in this worthy effort.

As we discussed these issues with each class, the children asked questions and/or shared stories about their families medical experience with heart problems. Some students talked about their own personal heart problem, which makes us, as teachers, feel privileged to have been trusted by these students t0 talk about their personal situation.

But, over the past week we have also been asked about the heartbreaking nature of students thinking about their home life and asking if, "they could keep the money collected because their family needs money for a broken down car, for food or other things." As you can well imagine, the children hear about the economic strains impacting their family and carry those "feelings" and emotions to school. Within the physical education class, there are numerous "teachable moments" to help children learn about their developing self concept and this certainly was worthy of our time and discussion. As we addressed this emotional question, we focused on the type of person that they wanted to become as they grow up in life and that people respect them for their honesty, trustworthyness, and having good character. The fact that their families need money, we explained could be helped in many other ways and that taking money in the name of this charity was not the way to help their family.

We always debate whether we want to do a fundraising activity every year, but its opportunities like this that make us feel that it is a worthy effort, for not only the American Heart Association, but also, a special time for us, as teachers, to help children to explore and develop their own sense of values as they try to understand difficult issues.

Jump Rope For Heart....Coming

The Jump Rope For Heart link provides allot of information about this program that we will commence in March at our school.

Please feel free to contact the P.E staff should you have any questions. Thanks so much for your continued support.

March Madness !

Well, as March roars in with a winter storm, we look back over what the kids did in the month of Feb. Our big unit on bowling was allot of fun, make sure to ask you child how they did in the competition among their grades. Unfortunately, there can only be one winner per grade but it sure generated allot of excitement and team work in the class effort to knock down as many total pins as possible. We also had a unit on 12 circuit training stations, each different and hopefully fun and challenging for the children.

March madness time is a fun time to pick our favorite college basketball teams (Go B.C.), which hopefully the children will learn to appreciate. They can learn geography as they learn about where the college teams are located and can perform math computations in looking at scores and points won and lost by, along with learning about how brackets work!

During our physical education time this month we are planning to set up a "Mission Impossible" circuit, with each station presenting varying sets of challenges! We also will begin our annual fundraiser with Jump Rope For Heart, which the children learn about the spirit of fundraising and illness in peoples life. Given the state of the economy, we are very conscious of the hardships that exist locally in our school but we feel going through the fundraising process to heighten awareness is an important learning tool for our children. Over the years, many of the children have felt comfortable and shared their own families personal medical stories and we, as staff, feel good about the fact that the children feel comfortable with us to talk about their families situations. Our message to the children is that not all families can give and whatever they can do to ask for donations is an important lesson for them to learn. We always have fun and the children look forward to the activity stations and the potential to earn prizes for raising money.

Again, we hope that you will talk with your child about their days activity in physical education, what they learned and had fun doing and we hope that their time with us will serve as a source of motivation to develop an active and healthy life style!