Heart Healthy Hikers

 

The Brentwood Elementary Heart Healthy Hikers are at it again. Our year started off with students and staff walking their socks off on the school playground. It won’t be long and we will have walked the distance equal to that of a trip across Canada from coast to coast.

After Christmas we started a home program to encourage families to walk outside of school hours. February was the first month for our home program. Families were able to enter their name in a draw each day they walked a minimum of fifteen minutes. Our families walked 667 times during the month of February and 934 times during March. Way to go!  The winner of our first family draw was Jake Fehr from our morning kindergarten class and his family chose to receive family passes to the East Lake Recreation and Wellness Center. The winner of the March draw was Kate Hatton in 6B. Her family will be selecting their prize from our list of fun and active family activities.
 

Now we want to share our enthusiasm for health and physical activity with the seniors in our community. As a community service project, Brentwood students raised money to donate a Wii Game system to the residents of the Wheatland Lodge. Now the seniors can bowl, box, play tennis and golf without leaving the comfort of their activity room. Our students know that getting up and active helps them feel better, they are convinced it will do the same for the residents of the Lodge. On Thursday, April 3 four students traveled to the Lodge to present the Wii, give a demonstration, and issue a challenge. “Practice up,” they said, “We’ll be back to challenge you!”
 

Quotations from the students in response to the questions “How did it feel to represent our school at the Lodge today?"

Tomas: I feel pretty proud of myself. I was nervous but it was fun.
Scott: It was fun. Everybody was so good at it.
Caleb:We got to teach them how to play and it makes me feel good.
Brittany: I am glad that when it’s rainy they can still have exercise. It’s good for kids to find out what it feels like to do something nice for others.

OLDER NEWS

FALL 2008

Brentwood Elementary School is excited to announce the start of our “Heart Healthy Hikers” Program. The goal of our program is to promote healthy, active lifestyles for our students, staff, and community members by encouraging them to get walking. We want to raise awareness of lifestyle
health related issues such as heart disease. We want our students to learn the importance of daily physical activity and the health benefits it provides. Our first assembly introduced students to their “houses” and their leaders.

We have Awesome Olympians, Fitness Fanatics, Cardio Creatures, Marvelous Mobilizers, and Sensational Stompers. Enthusiasm and excitement filled the gym as students found out when they could walk, proper walking techniques, and how to keep track of their kilometers. How far can we walk
in a year- to Edmonton? to Vancouver? All the way across Canada? We will be posting our results online. Our program is just getting started

Our program is just getting started and we will be expanding it to encourage our families to walk outside of school hours as well. We will be making pedometers available to program participants and providing a wide range of fun activities to keep students motivated and moving over the year. Our sincere thanks go out to the wonderful people and organizations who
have supported our program.
~Brentwood Teacher Leaders and Organizers: Jackie Lozeron, Carrie Miller, and Diane Philie
~Dr. Alison Clarke who helped us obtain support from the Calgary Rural Primary Care Network
~Mrs. Angela Berger for making our great banners and flags
~Strathmore Garden market IGA- for providing apples to treat our students after our first walk