December 2009
By Tracy Garcia
Whittier Daily News – Whittier, CA
Playing nice just got a little easier for students at Nelson Elementary School.
And it’s due in great part to the elbow grease of dozens of parents, staffers and kids who gave up their free time last weekend to help set up the campus’ new playground program.
“It’s something I read about on the Internet and it grabbed my eye,” said Principal Marla Duncan, who said the 575-student campus had been fundraising for years to get new playground equipment.
“But we raised money not knowing how expensive (the equipment) is, along with the installation,” she said.
“And since we couldn’t afford to put more equipment in, we started looking at other ways to get kids occupied here on campus.” That’s when Duncan found Peaceful Playgrounds, a lower cost recreational program that uses multicolored alphabet and number grids, lines, circles and squares to engage students in more than 100 different kinds of outdoor activities.
Kids will be able to play hopscotch, four square, around the world, pickle and volley tennis – and they’ll all be playing by the same rules, which will be taught by the P.E. teacher and should help reduce conflicts between students during play, Duncan said.
“Students are also training to be peer mediators,” Duncan said. “And one thing they’ll learn is that when there’s a conflict, you can solve it with like a rock-paper-scissors game – as opposed to name-calling, pushing and hitting.
“We’re hoping this is going to make the playground more peaceful.”
But before the school could get the program under way, officials had to find some help painting the lines, circles and squares onto the school’s newly laid blacktop.
And that’s where parents, staffers and students came in, Duncan said – “we couldn’t have done it without them.” They arrived at 8 a.m. Oct. 17, with most working one-hour shifts to get the shapes painted on to the blacktop and handball courts, as well as new lines added to the handball and volleyball courts.
“I thought it was neat from the beginning, when the school sent home a note asking us to help,” said Sandra Felix, 26, who attended Nelson as a youngster and whose daughter is in kindergarten there.
It was bit more complicated than she and her husband, Robert, had expected – they ended up staying two-and-a-half hours – but Felix said it was a good lesson for their daughter, Kayla.
“We want to be involved and we wanted her to know we’re going to be involved,” Felix said.
Whittier Daily News – Nelson Elementary Brings Peace to New Playground
