BANANA PEELS AND APPLE SKINS P.E. Teacher Julie Starks shares her fruity theme Planting a Seed A P.E. program sprouted from KR's Back-to-School Fruit Cup. Why not read about both and make your program blossom with new ideas! FROM JULIE I divide my classes (grades K-8) into 4 teams and name each team according to a theme that I choose. Using information from the Web site fruitpages.com, I grouped the grades into these types of fruit: K-2 Berries (all are named Blueberries, Cranberries, Grapes, Strawberries) 3-4 Tree Fruit (each class voted on their team names, Apples, Cherries, Nectarines, Plums for 3rd; Apples, Cherries, Peaches, Pears for 4th) 5-6 Citrus Fruit (Clementine, Lemon, Lime, Ugli and Grapefruit, Lemon, Lime and Orange) 7-8 Tropical Fruit (Mangos, Papayas, Pineapples, Kiwis, Carambolas, Bananas, can't remember which teams with which grade!) They liked voting on their own team names. Grades 6-8 wrote a paragraph on one of the fruits and grades 4-8 are creating team mascots with their fruit name. These will be on posters and displayed around the school. I asked the school lunch program to add fruit cups to their "a la carte" offerings (it was mostly chips and cookies) and it went over so well they now include fresh fruit on the cart. The 8th graders asked if they could have a fruit tasting and bring in tropical fruit. We had our first tasting 2 weeks ago. Every other week I meet with the 1st graders for an "extra" 10 min. as our schedule shorts them, so we used this time for a tasting of their team fruits. A mom came in the next day to ask me, "Which blue things did my daughter eat yesterday? She loved them!" It is fun for all of us as I call out teams, "Ugli's on field 2 with Limes. Carambolas and Pineapples record steps on the computer today!" So while we are not using your fruit cup activity exactly as you described it, we are learning to appreciate fruit and plan to add more fruit more to our diets! Our Royal Runners group is going strong too. We meet 2x a month for 1 hour. Out of 250 kids in school we have 30-40 kids, most from grades 1-4, running for fun. LINK: Carol's School Nutrition Association Presentation in Los Angeles, 2006 EMAIL Carol Goodrow: carolgoodrow@verizon.net Julie Starks: jastarks@earthlink.net Creator of Royal Runners' Slogan Top of the Page Artwork by Elizabeth, a healthy eater! KIDSRUNNING.COM PRIVACY POLICY