Milestones in Physical Education - "The Pacer"

As we delve into the many milestone moments and markers in child development that our children experience throughout life, we often overlook the importance of physical growth, fitness skills, and challenging their strong bodies to hone those motor skills that connect body and brain systems to work cooperatively.

This week I wanted to highlight our excellent PE department and specifically let them share some of the incredible successes the coaches have seen this year and to remind each of us how important our commitment to daily physical activity is to our children’s brain and body development. 

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Hello from Physical Education!

We are so encouraged by the growth we have witnessed in the overall fitness of our students! We are proud to share that our students are demonstrating excellent fitness levels and we believe that our school’s commitment to providing quality daily Physical Education is paying big dividends. Our Lower School students have run nearly 1600 miles during our Monday run program - which is amazing! We have children as young as Pre-K 4 and kindergarten who have individually completed 20 miles or more and routinely run a mile or more during a PE run day. We recently had several students in 3rd grade complete 2 miles in one day, which is absolutely phenomenal! 

During our Monday run program, PE classes go out to the track for approximately 22 - 24 minutes and the students jog or walk as many laps as they can. Students earn "toe charms" for every 5 miles. Students visually plot our journey on a giant map in the gym and love to see how far they can go. Our first run destination was Disneyworld and now we are on our way to New York City. Over the next couple of years we plan on going to Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, and back home! It has been a remarkable & exciting experience for our students.

Both Coach Whitcomb and I are seeing amazing results in our Pacer testing. In 35 years of teaching, I personally have never witnessed this high level of scores. In addition, I am so proud to share that 100% of our students have surpassed and exceeded the recommended average scores - to the point that we will soon be introducing a more advanced test designed for high school students! 

Finally, we also have had great improvement in our weekly Jump Rope work and recently had several students place very well in a national Jump Rope competition.

We are seeing the benefits every day of what happens when children are given daily opportunities to practice, push and develop fitness skills. 

Great work Sabers!

Coach Anderson 

Coach Whitcomb