Kevin Yarnell received instant satisfaction once he saw students using the newly painted blacktop behind Chancellor Livingston Elementary School.
The physical education teacher enjoys seeing his students active, and he and a group of volunteers accomplished this goal by painting the blacktop with games for the students to enjoy and keep active.
“It made it all worthwhile, the time we all put into it and the planning,” said Yarnell. “It was rewarding to see the students being so active and enjoying it. The smiles on their faces were pretty cool.
“I think we hit a home run, and it’ll be here for years to come for the kids and community.”
By being creative with the blacktop area, students can enjoy outdoor games on the blacktop on days when the grass is wet or covered by snow. Students will have the chance to play games such as tic-tac-toe, hopscotch and four square as well as participate in an obstacle course.
“It’s cool this is here for us,” said fifth grader Aubree Fraleigh. “We’ll have more stuff to do and we’ll be more active.”
Yarnell added, “It will help us here in PE because it reinforces our curriculum and classroom with the various movements, fitness and Yoga poses, so things we’re doing in our classroom will correlate outside,” said Yarnell. “They’ll be skipping, hopping, jumping, and doing various fitness exercises like jumping jacks and yoga poses.”
Yarnell’s colleagues are seeing the benefits of the painted blacktop.
“It adds more options and activities for students to individually and collaboratively do fun activities outside,” said Brett King, elementary school principal. “The students can self-select what they’re interested in that day and there is a lot of variety.”
Melissa Costa is outside with students during recess.
“It’s going to give them a lot more options to do outside, and a lot of it is team building and working together,” the teacher’s aide said. “They’re really excited about there being more four squares because we only had one and they’re really excited about the obstacle course.”