Greening Gym Class

It’s a cliche, but things sure have changed since when I was in school. As I mentioned previously, my daughter recently started kindergarten. In addition to recess, which one would expect, she actually has physical education (P.E.) every third day (alternated with music and art classes). I’m pleased she’s being kept active, but surprised to be thinking about gym class quite so soon. In the midst of watching her explore the brave new word of P.E., I received an e-mail inquiry regarding the Greening Schools web site. This was a joint project of the Illinois EPA and GLRPPR’s parent organization, the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC, formerly WMRC), which is unfortunately no longer funded (please e-mail me any ideas regarding funding sources to maintain and expand this site). The inquirer was interested in greener lesson plans geared toward P.E. I’ve seen resources related to greening athletic facilities, but the idea of actually greening the P.E. curriculum was an interesting twist to me, so I decided to share some of the resources I provided in response here. In this post I’ll discuss both resources for more sustainable P.E. facilities as well as curricula.

Facilities

Ideas abound for greening athletic facilities and playgrounds, from energy efficiency upgrades to using recycled rubber in athletic track and field surfaces. Check out the following links for ideas.

The list could surely go on and on. If you have other suggestions, share them in the comments section for this post.

Curricula

In response to the e-mail request I received, I did a quick Google search on “greening physical education.” I came across the following:

Do you have other case studies or ideas? Share them in the comments section of this post.

Thanks to Roger Peluso for asking the question!

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