Working out

My parents bought my husband/my Christmas gift early this year and had it delivered this weekend - a treadmill. I'm not very good about keeping to an exercise regime and I hope that this treadmill is going to put me on the right path to a regular fitness routine.

In the late 1990s my husband and I used to belong to a gym but once we had children, we found it impossible to take the time away from our babies to work out.

Around 2009, I used to be quite devoted to my Wii Fit and would use it nightly but I was derailed when I began to work on my Masters of Education final paper in the spring of 2010 and I had to devote my Wii Fit time to M.Ed writing time. When I tried to re-establish my Wii Fit pattern after earning my M.Ed, I found that I couldn't crack the top 10 of any challenges and I became discouraged.

I discovered Just Dance for the Wii later on and found that to be fun to do with my daughter but I fell out of the habit when my daughter had other things she'd rather do in the evening. I've started a Just Dance Club at school on Fridays at lunch for junior division students so that teachers and students could see dancing as fun and fitness rather than just as  performance, but once a week is not enough to stay fit.

What does this have to do with schools and school libraries? In Ontario, students are required to have twenty minutes of daily physical activity - this link to the Ministry of Education's site explains more and offers resources. I'm not a "regular classroom teacher" so it's usually up to them to incorporate the DPA time. I know many of our students lately have been hiding out in stairwells and bathrooms to avoid going outside for recess; I'm not sure if it's the cold they fear or the free time. School libraries support reading and research but can also play a part in working out the body as well as the brain. I'm trying to do it at school with my Just Dance Club (which is insanely popular - kids have asked if we could do it every day but I've got Tech Crew, Student Council, and Boys Reading Club on the other lunch hour time slots). I need to talk the talk and walk the walk at home as well.