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JOG-A-THON
$10,000 raised in one day
Friends run together
Here's an innovative way to acquire some needed funds for your school system. Add a "Fund Run" to your school running program. Kids run jog-a-thon style; asking for flat-rate pledges for participation in a school-based running event. Whom to ask for pledges? Aunt Anne, Uncle Danny, Mother, Father, Grammy, and Grampy and the nice people next door! Something Fun for Funds! - Carol Goodrow, KidsRunning.Com Editor |
Top runner in her grade!FUND RUN
In June 2007, students from a California school ran laps to raise over $10,000 in one day, raising enough money to purchase a new school computer server. This is a great way to supplement school budgets to meet the needs of education.
SCHOOL RUNNING PROGRAM
Pretty impressive to raise this much money in one day, but these were not inexperienced runners. They had already run a total of 26,000 laps just by running for 20 minutes every Friday at school. 26,000 laps - how far is that? It's the same as running from their school in California to the start of the Boston Marathon and then to the finish line of Disney World in Orlando, Florida.
INTEGRATING MATHAlong the way, the young runners kept tallies of their laps run. Counting tallies helped them conceptualize the distance of their running.
TEACHERS TOO!
If you look closely at this bulletin board wall display, you'll see mile markers of distances across our country as well as teacher cut-outs showing the distances that the elementary school teachers ran. That's the spirit! Teachers need to be healthy and fit too, just like the kids. And it's much more fun for kids to run if their teachers are out there with them. The competition earned a free pair of running shoes for the teacher who ran the greatest distance.
RUNNING AND LEARNING
This is what we want school running to be all about: fitness, fun, helping others, and cooperating - along with an educational component. In this case the educational component was math with tallies, addition, and distance; all in a real life meaningful context.
HOW ABOUT YOU?
So here is another idea, out of many, to help you decide which type of running program is best for your community. You have so many to choose from. Take a moment and click on KR's LINKS Page. There is no such thing as one-size-fits-all when it comes to kids' running.
Shanna Hill is the running club inventor/director. Kudos to Shanna for organizing the club and jog-a-thon!
Carol Goodrow: carolgoodrow@verizon.net