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Stadium Drive students jump for joy
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Neighbors | Sarah Foor .Derek Billiter looked happy to be jumping during his classroom’s Jump Rope for Heart event on March 9.
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After an entire gym period of jumping out of the way, the third-grade Stadium Drive students and their teacher, Kendal Farber (center), showed off some wacky faces as a form of stress relief.
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The third-grade Stadium Drive students were split into duos who counted each other’s successful jumps. McKayla Bryan (jumping) also received a bit of a pep talk from her teammate Katie Demetrios while they were counting.
By SARAH FOOR
On March 10, a dance song playing in the gym at Stadium Drive Elementary repeated some very simple directions: “Jump everybody, jump everybody, jump!”
A playlist of jump-worthy songs was put together by gym teacher Kendal Farber for the school’s Jump Rope for Heart week, being celebrated March 7-11.
“This is my first year as a gym teacher, and my first time celebrating Jump Rope for Heart,” Farber explained during a class with Lindsay Koch’s third-graders. “Jumping in place for a long time can get a little boring, so my approach was to make it fun with teamwork in some events, and friendly competition in others.”
The students’ teamwork activities included jumping face-to-face under one rope, tandem jumping, and simultaneously attempting tricks under a double dutch rope.
Koch’s students competed in competition day of Jump Rope for Heart, where solo students tried to out-jump each other while swinging their rope backward, forward and hopping on one foot.
In teams, the students tallied each other’s successful jumps and Farber is planning to hand out prizes and jump ropes to the top hoppers in the school.
“I like this event because it helps me teach the kids why it’s so important to exercise. I took special care in teaching them that some people are not born with hearts as healthy as theirs, so they are very lucky,” Farber shared.
She also found that the days of jumping for joy were sometimes surprising to her students.
“They’ve been running up to me after their jumps and saying, “I’m sweating now, Miss Farber!’ I think they’re amazed that jumping is such hard work, but I can tell they’re definitely having fun with it.”