Two lucky kids who logged the healthy activities they participated in over the summer won a drawing for a skateboard and a bike, both with helmets. Sawtooth Elementary teacher K.B. O’Neill has been sponsoring a summertime Healthy Habits program for about 10 years. K.B’s sister, Great Gifts owner Nancy Cihlar, provides smaller prizes for all the participants. (L-R) Hazel Kemp (bicycle winner), Nancy Cihlar, and Linnea Gesch (skateboard winner).
Sawtooth Elementary students found out on September 10 that it pays to incorporate healthy habits into their summer vacation. It even pays to go to summer school.
For years now, elementary teacher K.B. O’Neill has been arranging tangible rewards for students who verify at the beginning of the school year that they spent a portion of their summer vacation doing things like reading, exercising, eating healthy foods, drinking water, practicing math, limiting screen time, or volunteering.
This year, O’Neill ratcheted up the rewards by holding an assembly for the entire student body so everyone could see how worthwhile those healthy habits turned out to be. Also receiving rewards were the students who had participated in Sawtooth’s summer reading program, writing workshops, and book club.
“I know you all work so hard to read,” Principal Gwen Carman told the student body, “and that’s very, very important.”
O’Neill talked to the students about the variety of activities involved in being healthy. “You need a balance of your brain, your body, and even your emotions,” she said.
Teacher Betsy Jorgenson, who ran the summer program, asked the students if they had fun reading and writing at school this summer. A strong, enthusiastic chorus of voices yelled, “Yah!”
“Thanks for coming, you guys,” Jorgenson said.
All students who participated got one of dozens of prizes donated by O’Neill’s sister Nancy Cihlar, owner of Great Gifts in Lutsen. She has been the benefactor of this program for years.
Thelucky winners of a drawing for a skateboard and a bike, each with a helmet, were Emma Gesch and Hazel Kemp, respectively. The more Healthy Habits activities kids had documented, the more their names were entered into the drawing.
Funding for these prizes was a group effort, with the Sawtooth Student Council raising some of the funds, grants from the North Shore Health Care Foundation and the Statewide Health Improvement Program paying the rest, and Superior North Bike Shop selling the prizes at a discount.
The group receiving rewards was very large. The whole event was so exciting that it would be hard to imagine that the rest of the student body wouldn’t also decide to get in on the action next summer.
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