1. Designate one day a week as a “Walk to School” day. Call it “Walking Wednesday,” or “Strollin’ Monday.” Have students dress up in a theme color, like green, or hand out silly paper hats for them to wear on their walk.
2. Younger students may enjoy staging a walking “parade” at lunch or recess. Encourage this activity by having them craft “parade” props, such as streamers, flags or badges. You could also hand out musical instruments, such as small drums or flutes, for them to play on their “parade.”
3. Organize a large game of tag that includes your whole class. You could even expand it to include all the kids in your class’s grade. Keep it structured by having half the children be “it,” and making them trade off this duty with the other half of the students. Provide prizes for participation, such as juice-based frozen treats or lemonade. For some fun new tag game ideas, check out this page.
4. Hold a trivia bee on facts about walking. Safe Routes to School has compiled this list of interesting walking facts. Present these facts to your students, and then organize them into teams. Have the teams compete to answer questions about walking, and award the winners with an exercise-centric prize, such as new shoelaces.
5. Start a milage club, and represent your students’ progress visually. If your students are using Gym60 pedometers, they should be able to track how many miles they are walking using the Gym60 web app. Each week, add up the students’ totals and let them know how many miles they have walked. Represent their progress with a giant paper caterpillar that gets a new ring for each mile walked. See if your students can make that caterpillar span the classroom!
