Time to Gear Up!!

And YES, the pun is intended!!

It is very hard to believe, but the school year is nearly upon us. Back to School Nights have been planned, PTA's are announcing their first meetings, and parents are working on their morning routine plans to make sure everyone gets where they need to be at the time they need to be there.

Let's make sure that everyone thinks about adding walking and biking to school as part of the regular routine!!

If your school had a weekly walk/bike day going last spring, get it going as soon as possible while the weather is good. If you would like more information on how to get a Walk 'n Roll program going at your school, please contact us - we'd love to help! jharris(at)activateomaha(dot)org.

Much more info to come here, so spread the word about our blog and we'll be in touch soon!

Bike to School Day is May 19!!!

It's been a crazy busy time at Activate Omaha. We owe you some fun updates on the bike blender parties that have been going on at Walk 'n Roll schools lately, among other things!

In the mean time, we hope that you will all join us May 17 - 21 in celebrating national Bike to Work Week! Of course, the kid equivalent of this is Bike to School Day, and we will be celebrating this on Wednesday, May 19.

We are keeping this low-key for a reason: It doesn't have to be complicated...ride with your kids and enjoy the morning together. Make sure you're wearing a helmet and that you lock up the bike when you get to school!

I would love to have a folder bursting with pictures of full bike racks like the one pictured here! Go for it!

Tour de Schools!

What a great day! The weather was a little crummy, but my spirits are soaring from a day of visiting several schools.

My day started out at Benson High School, presenting to a couple of magnet focus classes about the Activate Omaha mission of incorporating physical activity into every day life. It was so fun to be talking to older students for once - usually my audience is PTA parents or elementary aged kids. The students asked good questions - and somebody from both classes asked me if I had ridden MY bike to the school this morning! :) Unfortunately, family logistics dictated a car trip for me today, but I promised them that I would come back to watch their final presentations about how to fight childhood obesity in the Benson area and that I would arrive via bicycle. I can't wait to go back!

Let me also say, that I can't get this idea out of my head: Benson Bunnies on Bikes. There is one small bike rack at the school (that I saw, anyway), and it would be great if we could see it filling up in the mornings.

After a quick stop for coffee in the Benson district, I was off to Westbrook Elementary to begin the video shooting project for Safe Routes Nebraska. Teacher Leader Glen Jagels and PE Teacher Derek Keesling did a fantastic job talking about the great walking program they have going on at Westbrook.

Swanson Elementary was next. Principal Laura Croom showed us the very creative tally system for tracking the number of kids who walk and roll on Feet First Fridays. When the container is full of balls, the school will earn a bike blender party!! Swanson has a beautiful park/arboretum in its backyard - what a beautiful backdrop to any morning walk.

Last up was Saddlebrook where Principal Mark Suing and 4th grade teacher Robert Zook talked about the Bike and Hike program that the 4th graders are tracking. Check out this awesome display! Looks like those 4th graders had better watch out for the 2nd graders. Of course, we had to demo the bike blender for the video guy, too! :)

Special thanks to Kelly Morgan from Safe Routes Nebraska for coming to Omaha to visit these schools for the video. Dan Schneider, videographer/director/producer extraordinare, is a hoot and it was a fun day! (Here he is video taping little feet walking past him in the hallway! He's gonna love me for posting this one.)

Nebraska Walk to School Day!

Wednesday is Nebraska Walk to School Day! Many of our Walk 'n Roll schools will be participating, but you don't need a formal event to take advantage. Plan some extra time on Wednesday morning and enjoy the sights and sounds of spring.

Live too far to walk, you say? Drive part way and walk the rest!

Make the morning extra fun by starting a Walking School Bus from your neighborhood. Check the link at the top of the blog to download more info.

Yippy!

Check out Saturday's Omaha World Herald for a great article about the Saddlebrook project!!

Bikes, Brains and Blenders!

Have I ever mentioned that the 4th graders at Saddlebrook are rockstars?? Well, they are!!

The Green Wave presented their assembly, titled "Bikes, Brains and Blenders" the other night at the school science fair. The kids used the equipment purchased with the mini-grant funding to demonstrate various scientific principles, and to emphasise why wearing a bike helmet every time you ride is a MUST.

The "doctors" all did a great job with their demonstrations. We learned all about angular momentum and how bikes stay upright. We learned about how an egg is like our heads, which the yoke being the brain. We learned about what happens to a jello brain when you drop it on the floor inside of a bike helmet ... and then without a bike helmet! We learned how kinetic energy powers the bike blender as you pedal.


We also learned that the principal, Mr. Suing, is a good sport, always willing to be the proverbial guinea pig when needed, and that Mr. Zook has an affection for egg jokes. :) (The program was very eggciting, eggactly like we thought it would be!)


The doctors will be taking their show on the road on Friday to nearby Fullerton Elementary to present their program to the 3rd graders! Mr. Zook has been graciously collecting all of the materials, instructions and the script so that other schools can use this equipment in the future.

Check out the slideshow!

What A Week!

It has been a crazy (good crazy) week, and we have a lot to catch up on!

We did a mini walk audit at Columbian Elementary school this week during student arrival time. The school has a fantastic student safety patol, but that still does not prevent vehicle congestion and frustration. We're getting a walking distance map printed for the school and plan to pilot a couple of walking school busses on Walk to School Day!

We also had a fantastic meeting at Rohwer Elementary (Millard Public Schools) this week. The Rohwer Rockets are fortunate to have such an awesome Principal and active living advocate in Mrs. Brosamle. Walking school busses, walk to school day and bike to school day are just the beginning of what we can accomplish at this school.

Rohwer got my attention right away as I pulled up for the meeting - tons of bike parking, and even a dedicated scooter parking rack! It was the adult-sized bike that got my attention, though. It belongs to one of the teachers, which was music to my ears.

Places, Everyone!

The Saddlebrook Green Wave 4th Graders did the dress rehearsal today for their "Science of Cycling" assembly - which they have creatively renamed "Bikes, Brains and Blenders." :) These kids are so great - I'm so proud of them!! Can't wait for everybody else to find out how great they are tomorrow night at the Green Fair!

Dig Out Those Bikes!!

Let's hear it for Cooper and Hogan who made their initial bike to school trip for the spring this morning! Way to go, fellas!

The weather is getting better by the day - dust off those bikes and helmets and get ready to roll. Gloves and thin stocking caps under the helmets might be needed for the morning rides for a while, but don't let that stop you!

An ABC Quick Check is in order after a long winter storage:

*Check the air in the tires. Chances are they've naturally deflated quite a bit over the winter. Not sure how much to inflate? Check the side wall of the tires like you would on your car to see what the recommended PSI is. Somewhere between 40 and 60 PSI is a good bet.

*Give the brakes a squeeze and make sure they are working properly.

*Look at the chain and make sure it is on the chainring, isn't broken, etc.

*Do a quick spin around the driveway to make sure that everything feels right. Chances are that your kid grew like a weed over the winter and his/her saddle needs to be raised!

If you find mechanical problems, any of our wonderful local bike shops will be willing and able to help out. Tell 'em Activate Omaha sent you! :)

Now is also a great time to review safe riding rules with your kids. Helmets EVERY time! Also, please be sure to use caution when encountering the loose gravel still on our streets, especially in the intersections. Extra braking time is required!

Got great photos of your family biking to school that you want to share? Feel free to send them our way!

I thought we'd never see the day...

Before and after: January 5 and March 17.

We've been cooped up for too long - get out and walk or ride to school!

Walk, Roll, Win!

We have returned home from the National Bike Summit, full of renewed energy and spirit. Some of this may have to do with the fact that nearly all of the remaining snow melted while we were gone. :) Thank goodness!!!

At any rate, we are ready to ramp up the spring walk and roll to school activities, and hope you are ready as well. I'd like to think that convincing families to get out and walk or ride to school won't be a hard sell, given the level of cabin fever since December 9!

Watch this space for an update on our upcoming month-long challenge for April: Walk, Roll, Win! The"win" part refers to your opportunity to win a visit from the infamous Activate Omaha bike blender for a pedal powered smoothie party at your school! The Nebraska Dairy Council is sponsoring this event with us, so we will also have some great materials from them to provide for your students.

More info to come soon!

If I Ride...

We just returned from the National Bike Summit in Washington DC. So much to report, so much inspiration, so many ideas... more to come here. In the mean time, check out this awesome video from the new People For Bikes campaign.

The best line: "If I ride, I will only use oil on my chain, and oil tankers will haul chocolate milk."

Bike Blender and Bingo

We had a wonderful time with our friends at Westbrook Elementary last night! Westbrook is the home of one of our initial Walk and Roll to School programs, and our spirits are always lifted when we hang out with the Wildcats.

Last night was the annual Bingo Night sponsored by the school's Community Club, complete with pizza, prizes, popcorn, and pedal-powered smoothies, courtesy of the bike blender! The odometer tells the story - 8+ miles pedaled while producing yummy "Jack-o-Lantern" smoothies.

Pictured here is the NEW (commercially made) bike blender, courtesy of the grant we received from the National Center for Safe Routes to School. The Community Bike Shop came through for us again with a free bike and top level Blenderologist assistance with installation. Shown in the photo is my fabulous assistant (aka my hubby) who is putting the finishing touches on the odometer/spedometer and the pedal-powered lights.

Major kudos once again to HyVee - this time the Peony Park location - for helping out their neighborhood school by donating the ingredients and recipe for the smoothies! Folks, there are registered dietitians at each HyVee, and they are awesome. Their dedication to our community is much appreciated!

I would be remiss if I did not give a special shout out to Lauren, who became my very able assistant. She jumped right in and helped us all night...even devising a system for making sure we had the bike in a gear that was just right for each rider.

Lauren's parents lead a walking school bus from their home each morning when the weather is nice. They've even had kids dropped off at their house to join them! The example they have set for the school is very inspirational, and we applaud their dedication.

Boltage Update

A quick note today about Boltage. Here is a link to a TV report about a California school that implemented the Boltage (formerly Freiker) program:

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/video?id=6747072

Good Stuff!!

YIPPY!!!!! Freiker Fever comes to Omaha!

It's a wonderful day here at Activate Omaha! Our dream of bringing Freiker to Omaha has finally come true, thanks to a grant from Safe Routes Nebraska!!

What is Freiker? It is short for "FREquent bIKER," and it is a cool system that tracks the number of kids that walk and ride to school, and then provides incentives to kids as they reach their walking/riding goals. The heart of the system is the Freikometer, which is a weather proof, tamper proof, solar powered scanner that reads an RFID tag that is attached to the student's backpack. The machine uploads the data wirelessly to the Freiker website, where people can get real-time results on the number of kids who have walked or biked to school. (Below: the "before and after" effect that Freiker had on an elementary school.)

Yes, it is hard to explain...and let me potentially confuse our readers even more by saying that Freiker recently re-branded itself since our grant application was written, and is now known as

"Boltage," with the Freikometer now known as the Zapper. While the program started out to encourage biking, they expanded it for walking, necessitating the name change.

At any rate, Activate Omaha staff saw this program in action during a visit to Boulder in 2008, and were amazed at what we saw at Crestview Elementary: on a chilly 38* morning, 66 kids rolled up on their bikes. Combine that with the number of kids that walked, and there was very little vehicular traffic around the school. It was incredible. Check out this time lapse slide show of Boulder's Crestview Elementary from the Boltage website to see for yourself. (Holy bike parking, Batman!)

Our funding will allow us to put this program into action at 3 Omaha schools. The search will begin immediately to find the schools that will be the best fit for this, with the plan of having it up and running for Fall 2010!

Stay tuned as we begin this awesome journey!

Westbrook Update

Yesterday's visit to Westbrook Elementary just confirms what we already knew: this school and these kids are awesome! The Dynamic Duo of Principal Cindy Vann and Teacher Leader Glen Jagels are so great to work with.

We went to the school assembly to help celebrate the 2nd Quarter awarding of the Golden Shoe Award. Westbrook offers a walking club before school in addition to encouraging kids to walk and roll to school each day. Frequent Walker cards are used to track particpation, and each fully punched card is entered into a drawing for a quarterly prize! This quarter's prize was a flag football set, which was won by Paul, a frequent walking 4th grader.

The really big prize, though, is the coveted Golden Shoe Award, which is given to the classroom with the most overall particpation. The 5th graders were sad to give it up, but they were beat out this time by the 2nd grade!

A delightful bonus from the morning was to see the presentation of nearly $1700 to a representative from the American Red Cross. The Wildcats raised this money for Haitian relief, and the leadership shown by some of the older students in the school to organize and coordinate this was very impressive.

Watch for some safety improvements coming soon to Robertson Drive in front of Westbrook as we work to get the street changed to one-way during drop off and pick up hours.

Green Wave Update

Drat! I forgot my camera yesterday while at Saddlebrook Elementary helping the 4th grade Green Wave-ers. I am so proud of them and wish I could have provided a visual of them in action!
(This old photo will have to suffice for now.)

We talked yesterday about collecting data for the school's Walk 'n Roll to school program. We showed them the "boring worksheet" version tally count system and challenged them to come up with something better (and more fun!) that kids could do themselves as they arrive in their classrooms each morning. After brainstorming what data we wanted to collect, we divided them into groups.

These kids are brilliant! The each group was given a specific grade level to design for, and within 20 minutes, we had an awesome group of pilot projects on our hands:

* The Kindergarden group decided that since little kids like animals, their tally system would involve paper fish that could be dropped into fish bowls with photos of a person walking, a bike, a bus, a car.
*The first grade group designed an awesome lego stacking system that effectively created an instant bar graph of travel modes, and even thought to include an encouragement program, giving the winning grade an opportunity to throw water balloons at the 4th graders!
* Second grade proposed a popsicle stick and recycled container method that had clear and easy instructions.
*Third grade came up with a recycled pop can and pebble idea after a very impressive team brainstorming and design session.
*The 4th Grade group also took the recycled materials approach, suggesting we use recycled milk bottle lids from the cafeteria to put in re-used boxes.

Next up: pilot each of these systems in their own classroom for a week, then evaluate the process, and then pick the top 2 to be piloted in the whole school.

Thank you again to the National Center for Safe Routes to School for giving us this opportunity!

Fullerton Fair

What a blast we had at Fullerton Magnet Elementary last night! Fullerton is a very big school, so when they do something, they do it big. The event last night was the Science Fair/Health and Wellness Fair/Waffle Man dinner. We trotted out the Bike Blender for it's first full scale maneuver. Sure, we'd tested it at the bike shop and for a small group at Saddlebrook Elementary, but this was a scale unlike we have tried before!!

Major thanks to the 156th/West Maple Hy-Vee store who generously donated the smoothie ingredients. Store Dietitian Amanda came through with a great recipe for us, and was on hand last night to hand them out to families as smoothies were blended and sampled.

Talk about "trial by fire" - last night was the first official event outing for our new and fabulous intern, Kassi. She jumped right in and did a great job!

Along with strawberry/banana smoothies, and Walk to School zipper pulls, we also had the Fullerton walking distance map on display so that kids and parents could find their house and estimate the time it would take to walk to school. This school is located right in the middle of a large subdivison with great sidewalk connections, so there is a lot of potential.

Thanks, Falcons!!

Walking School Bus Video

I found this great video on YouTube about walking school busses. I'm hoping to produce something similar in Omaha soon... but in the mean time, here is a good one that was made at an elementary school in Seattle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td7jRsmneds

Dundee Elementary put a nice display in the school lobby to organize their walking school busses.

Next Up: Field Club Elementary!

We can add more names to the list of fantastic school staff members we've met with lately! 

Prinicpal Barb Wild and P.E. teacher Jill Parkert were great to chat with this afternoon about the possibilities of bringing the Walk 'n Roll movement to Field Club Elementary.  Walk 'n Roll Wednesdays are a possibility, as are some walking school busses.  It was great to hear about how they view neighborhood communication and interaction as a positive benefit to their school.  Field Club is a beautiful and historic part of town, and it will be great to work with them.

We're looking forward to chatting with their PTA soon and getting things rolling after spring break! 

Walk and Roll the only option!

Here is a link to an interesting article about a school in Toronto that just opened recently.  The principal has designated it a "walking only" school as "...part of a broader initiative at the Halton District School Board to stop traffic jams around schools and get students moving."  They've set up walking school busses from designated points, among other things.

Parents often cite weather as a barrier that keeps their kids from walking to school.  If they can get it done in Canada, surely we can get it done in Omaha!   What can we learn from their great example?

Meet the Green Wave!

We had an energizing meeting with the 4th Graders at Saddlebrook Elementary school today!  This is the group that will be utilizing the $1000 mini grant we received from the National Center for Safe Routes to School.

These very bright and creative kids will be taking the lead with this project:  developing and performing a school assembly about the benefits of walking/biking to school; coming up with the best way to evaluate our Walk 'n Roll to School project; and testing a hypothesis about how weather impacts student travel modes. 

All the while, they will also be learning some of their science and math curriculum using cool bike-themed equipment, and collecting and manipulating data they collect. 

Best of all, we have already begun talking about what "advocacy" means, and know that the leadership potential from this group will carry on as they move up to middle school and beyond. 

Stay tuned this semester to see what these awesome kids come up with!  Can't wait to work with them.
Special thanks to Saddlebrook principal, Mark Suing, and 4th Grade teacher, Robert Zook, for their help and support for this project!

Safe Route Sunday

Here is a chance to make a difference to help keep kids safe on the sidewalks.  No formalities, no rsvp's ... just find a drift that is blocking a sidewalk and clear it.  Corners, especially closer to schools, are in serious need of help so that kids can get across the streets without having to scale giant snow/ice mounds. 

Spread the word to your friends! 

Thanks, Prairie Wind!

 We had a great time getting to know some of the dedicated staff and parents of Prairie Wind Elementary yesterday.  This is a school that is ready to take action to make it a safer and easier choice to walk to school every day.   Walking School Busses are a great possibility for this school, as are some policy changes regarding traffic flow.  This is a very big school, but even little changes can make a big impact. 

We are looking forward to working with them this spring to get the Stallions walking and rolling!

Thanks, Columbian!

Thanks to the Columbian Elementary PTO for having us out last night to talk about Walk 'n Roll to School!  Columbian is a great neighborhood school with some awesome potential for walking school busses starting at a designated drop off area. 

Now is a great time to start thinking about the potential for spring.  Church parking lots make excellent locations for walking school bus starting points - publish the location and starting time for your Walk 'n Roll days...instant walking school bus!

Here we go again!

It bears repeating:  please shovel early and often for the school kids.  Even if you think kids in your neighborhood won't be walking to school, they are likely to still be walking to the bus stops!

Webinar: Bicycle and Walking Policies

America Walks provides fantastic webinars through their Safe Routes to School Coaching Network.  They last exactly 1 hour, are free of charge, and only require a PC for video and a phone line (via toll free number) for audio. 

This month's subject:  Bicycle and Walking Policies:  addressing policies that hinder and implmenting policies that help. It will be shown on January 26 from 1p -2p central time. click here to register 

If you have questions, please let me know:  jharris@activateomaha.org

BRRRRR!

Holy Cow!  It's COLD! 

School is starting up in Omaha again this week.  Between the cold weather and the piles (dare I say, mountains) of snow piled up everywhere, walking to school is going to be challenging! 

First, please remember that although many kids will be arriving via family car, there are still plenty of kids that will be braving the elements.  Please be extra cautious as you drive near schools, and keep an eye out for little people emerging from behind show piles as they attempt to cross the streets.

Second, please keep these little folks in mind when you are trying to decide if/when to shovel your sidewalks.  Many kids don't have a choice but to walk to school, and they deserve to get there safely - as do the kids that have to walk a short distance to their bus stops - so shovel early and often for their sakes!  (And don't forget to go around the corner if you live in a corner lot!)

Third, don't let the cold weather be a barrier to walking with your kids to school.  If you dress in layers, it can be done quite comfortably!  Once you get moving, you'll be surprised at how quickly you will warm up.