Megan Okui, one of our CSUMB student assistants, reports that the Porter Youth Center had access to a regulation track. They used the track one day a week.

When the kids first get to the track they do a series of stretches and hold them to a count of 10. After stretching they ran laps and used a hand stamp to record laps for each child.

As each child finished a designated number of laps - increasing each session from 2 to 3 to 4 to 5, etc. then the child would go to one of several exercise station areas.

There were exercise stations designated for jumping jacks, push ups, and sit ups. After the exercises a warm down lap or two was run.

The children also enjoyed competition like 100 meter sprints against each other, with the winners advancing from each group to race against each other. They also liked to run one lap to beat a designated time - like everyone run faster than 2 minutes.

One special workout most kids enjoyed was a backwards challenge. To mix up the running on the track, they were challenged to run backwards the entire time for one lap without stopping or to do some out of the ordinary thing besides running.

One interesting idea is to get children who usually stand and talk to "walk while they talk" at recesses from school or during lunch time. Especially if they were pedometers this walking while talking gives them quite a bit of unexpected exercise.