Green Hour Play Year 2

By:

Last year, one of our 2011-2012 activities was Green Hour Play. We began this initiative to encourage our students to be more physically active by playing outside and enjoying nature. Green Hour Play began in January of 2012, and students slowly accepted and participated  in our program.

This year, we began our Green Hour Play on the first day of school, August 27th, 2012. The importance of getting exercise by being physically active, getting aerobic exercise and playing outside in nature was discussed in our Physical Education class. We also tied in healthy nutritious eating lessons for an overall picture of what makes up good healthy living for a long healthy life into adulthood.

Students were given a monthly calendar to record their minutes spent playing outdoors. At the end of each month, students added up their total minutes for Green Hour Play and turned their calendar in to Coach Ochoa, the gym teacher,  or Ms. Southwick, the garden teacher. This became a monthly project which counted as an assignment and a grade. 

Calendars for each child were checked and filed.

A bulletin board outside the gym and cafeteria, showed schoolwide minutes by grade level for each month.

Each color of the bar graph stood for different months.

First semester results:

Blue= September              Yellow=October              Green= November              Red=December

A second graph shows the conversion of minutes to hours. 

The graphs  were used not only show the results for each month and the semester, but it was used for oral math questions that students would have to answer by reading the graph.

The first semester was such an improvement from last year.

Last year's total for January - April was 663,480 minutes which equals 11,058 hours.

We doubled that in the first semester this year.

Our schoolwide minutes for the first semester: September-December

                                       and the second semester: January-April

We know that many students played outside every day, but did not turn in their monthly calendar. We are working to develop students' responsibility and parental awareness and support in this very important endeavor.