West End Mileage Club

West End Memorial Elementary School is now in its fifth year implementing Mileage Club during lunch recess to promote healthy habits while providing an organized activity to reduce playground incidents. Members of the West End PTA volunteer their time twice a week during recess to organize and run this activity.

Here's How It Works
Students walk on the school playground twice each week. The Mileage Marker Cards are checked every time a child completes a lap or laps on the course. When recess ends, the students return their cards to their personal files. For each five laps a child walks, the child is rewarded with a Toe Token. All awards are designed to provide children with a sense of accomplishment, recognition and a source of positive image building. The children also learn responsibility, mathematics and record-keeping skills.

Children Sharpen Their Skills
By participating in the Feelin' Good Mileage Club, students discover that physical activity can be fun and rewarding. The children also enhance their scholastic skills! Feelin' Good Mileage Club schools find that:
• Students learn fractions (by counting laps).
• Students learn geography by plotting miles on a map and/or "walking" to a new destination.
• Participants learn about the environment and how to take care of it.
• Children learn how to set goals, work to achieve them and then evaluate their personal achievement.

Walking helps develop fitness while building muscles, burning calories, reducing stress and creating good lifelong habits. Educators who use the program say their students end the school year in better physical condition than before they began the Mileage Club. Best of all, we use walking to help make our playground almost hassle-free and a contributing part of the educational process. Besides promoting fitness, we also have a program that makes it easy to enhance learning readiness and self-esteem - two key elements in children's academic achievement.

Contributed by: Vincent Myers, West End Elementary School Principal