While the staff at Sisters Middle School supports this, we think it's also important for students to keep active, physically and mentally. Physically, students today are at greater risk of being overweight than in any other time in United States history. the Center for Disease Control has actually termed the problem an "epidemic."

Experts blame a destructive combination of too little activity and too much unhealthy food. We at SMS want to encourage our students to stay active this summer, so we will be distributing "physical fitness" calendars to the students before vacation. We're going to ask students to keep track of physical activity over the summer. We'd like the goal to be FOUR sessions weekly of at least 45 minutes. This can be swimming at the lake, skateboarding in town, walking the family dog, going to soccer camp, working out with a yoga tape, riding your bike to the store for milk, anything that gets students up and moving! At the end of the summer, we'll ask students to bring back their calendars with parents' signatures. We'll draw names from all the students who participated and award prizes in September.

As much as we value physical fitness, we believe mental fitness is equally important. And one of the best, and most fun, ways to strive for this goal is to read! Our DEAR program in Guideroom is one way we've tried to stress pleasure reading, but we want to expand this with a summer program. So on the other side of our physical fitness calendars, we'll have a "mental fitness" list. We're asking each student to read AT LEAST FIVE books for pleasure this summer: no assignments, no reports, no journals....just a list of the books, a tally of the pages read, and a parent's signature. Again, we will draw names for prizes from among all the names of students who have met the mental fitness goal! A final note on this: to make this goal more achievable for all students, we are allowing any upcoming 7th or 8th grader at SMS to check out up to five books from our library to keep for the whole summer.

Have a wonderful summer....and encourage your family and friends to join you in achieving good physical & mental fitness goals!

~Lora Nordquist, SMS Principal