ABS Fit Kids Club

Day 1

April 18th

Today in the club we did some general housekeeping. Meaning we went over the rules!

Rules of the Club are as follows:

1. Safety First, Look, Listen & Follow 

2. Be Respectful, respectful to yourself, to teachers, to volunteers, to each other and to our Natural Communities!

3. Have Fun

4. Wear Comfortable Clothing

5. Be respectful of nature, do not approach wildlife, or even dogs on the trails unless given the go a head from an adult. 

6. Responsibility, be responsible for bring your water bottle, wearing sneakers, bringing a snack and wearing the correct clothing. 

7. Listen- make sure to listen to the coaches, helpers and each other

8. No Yelling!! Try and talk to each other with kindness and cheer each other on!!

9. Do your best! 

10. Role Models- Try to help club members by putting your best foot forward and leading by setting a good example. 

(The rules written in green are rules that where decided on by each of the buddy groups)

What's a buddy group? The first thing I asked the members of the club to do was get themselves into pairs. Once in pairs I had the younger members select a pair of buddies from the older group. This brought together a buddy group. The buddy group is just a quick way to get a head count of all the members when we are out on the trails. Its also a great way to develop leaderships skills amongst all of the members, but especially the older Fit Club kids. 

With in their buddy groups they established rules they felt should be added. Discussed names of what they might wish to have their buddy group called. (This appears to be a work in progress) 

Once all of the members had finished their snack. We went outside to enjoy the beautiful day! All of us enjoyed the beautiful weather that we where lucky enough to have at the start of this Fit Kids Club. Mid-60's, sun shining and the color green springing up around us was perfect. 

Outside we did a collective warm up where each of the members if they wanted had the chance to lead the group in a exercise of their choice. It meant we did everything from yoga stretches to crawling on the ground like a worm. The whole point was to get their bodies energized and ready to go. 

After warm up they did an activity that promoted different forms of movement. What they had to do was go from one station to the next in a way that was instructed by the group before them. Before they left that station though their group had to leave instructions for the group behind them. Making it so one group could be doing Leap Frog to one station while the next was doing Cartwheels or Sprints.

Once the activity was done the members did have some time to do some free play amongst themselves. We had some members building forts, rolling down hills, running back up them, playing in the gaga pit or swinging on the swings. 

At the end of the afternoon session we did a closing circle where we did cheers celebrating members nominated by either the coaches or other members of the club for different things each of these individuals did to be helpful to either the group at large, or to individual members. This is a activity that will be done at the closing of each Fit Kids Club session. Having more then just the coaches nominating members gives everyone a chance to be recognized for the help and support they gave to different club members. 

Well it was for Andrea and I it was a great first Fit Kids Club meeting! I look forward to our next meeting on Wednesday. Which will be the day when we start to do more movement and work on cross country running. So please remember to make sure your Fit Kids Club kiddo has a water bottle, sneakers, comfortable clothing to run in and a snack!

* As a side note we are going to start doing a thing called Walk A Cross America. The destination we are heading towards is Disneyland in Anaheim CA. Which is a total of 2,877 miles from here to there. Its going to be a virtual walk where we take the miles we have collected in the Fit Kids Club to move us closer to our destination. 

These miles can be collected outside of the Fit Kids Club sessions and it is not sole reversed for Fit Kids members only. We have asked any fellow ABS student or staff to collect their miles they walk on their own to add to the distance we go to get us to our Disneyland destination. 

My hope is that we start this earlier next year so we can choose places that are outside of our country to learn about different cultures along the way.