This year’s Hop! Winter Walk Month Challenge was a huge success, with over 100 students across Ottawa logging 6,100 kms. That means that collectively, students in Ottawa walked further than the distance from St John’s, Newfoundland to Victoria, BC!
As part of the Winter Walk Month Challenge, organized by the Ottawa Student Transportation Authority in partnership with EnviroCentre, the classroom team that logged the most kilometres won a $100 cash prize. That achievement went to a group of students at Chapman Mill Public School who went above and beyond, walking 1,738 kms in total in February – Natalie Allaire’s two class teams at Chapman Mills PS, the Frogs and Owls.
Between the 60 students in the two classes, each student walked approximately 1 km per day at school. They walked outside in the schoolyard, or when the weather wasn’t great, they walked around the classroom. Natalie put on music and the kids enjoyed walking wherever they liked in the classroom for approximately 15 minutes each day to reach 1 km. Cumulatively, they walked the distance from Ottawa all the way to Nova Scotia!
Some families of children in the Frogs and Owl classes also walked to school or in their community to add to the team total. Natalie said that walking and logging their kilometres as a class was an easy and fun element to add to their daily routine. Logging their kilometres together helped with math as the students participated in adding up the total classroom distances walked per day.
The kids enjoyed working to collect milestones for the digital “Box of Treasures” and were very motivated to achieve the “golden sneaker” digital treasure for averting 40 kg of GHG. They recorded all their kilometres together on the SMART Board so they could see their progress together.
The best part of participating in the Hop! Winter Walk Challenge was seeing the kids faces when they hit another milestone or when they walked the distance to the next town!
Natalie Allaire, Teacher
One student said he was sad that the team hadn’t made it all the way to St. John’s, NL but he’s happy that the class will have another chance to walk together during the upcoming Spring into Spring Hop! challenge. The class will use their $100 prize for walking the furthest of any team in Ottawa to purchase environmentally friendly toys and books.
Congratulations to all of the Winter Walk Challenge participants, we look forward to seeing how far you walk this spring!
Curious to learn how to set up classroom challenges? Here are a few tips to get you started!
- Use the Hop! app to set up a team with your class and encourage them to log their walks to school or in the community. Not sure what the Hop! App is? Learn more here
- Watch or share our fun, educational video illustrating the five main benefits of active transportation. The video is available in and !
- Download and print our educational posters to hang in your classroom or school – they are available in multiple languages: English, French, Arabic, Mandarin, Spanish, Cantonese, Farsi, Vietnamese, Somali, and Russian.
- And don’t forget to check out all the resources on our web page.
- Curious to stay in the loop with School Active Transportation news in and around Ottawa? Sign up for our quarterly update newsletter!