Healthy choices day offers fun activities
Berl Tiskus
Kyle Finley, front, and Jeremy Bockus stir the ice cream mixture.
Berl Tiskus
Byron Crow, from Wild Wings Recovery Center, listens as a student asks a question.
Berl Tiskus
Seventh grader Heaven Bennett listens as teacher Clay Herring gives her boxing tips.
Berl Tiskus
Berl Tiskus
Berl Tiskus
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POLSON — Polson Middle School students learned that healthy choices could be fun choices on Sept. 24.
Healthy Choices Day started at PMS years ago to replace Red Ribbon Day, according to PMS Principal Tom DiGiallonardo.
“We wanted kids to know there are a lot of fun things to do in this area that don’t involve drugs, alcohol or tobacco,” he said.
Teachers share their interests and lead groups of kids.
One section creating a lot of student interest was Montana Wild Wings Recovery Center and their education birds. Byron Crow and Beth Watne from MWWRC chose a shady spot outside between the fifth grade wing and the PMS library to teach PMS students about their raptors. They brought Duke, a peregrine falcon; Lacy, an osprey; Sweeney, a Swainson’s hawk; and Louie, a long-eared owl.
Watne, director of MWWRC, spent a lot of time with Lacy, and she’s the first osprey in Montana in an educational program. Usually, Crow said, ospreys are too high strung to be around crowds and noise.
Lacy hit something — maybe a vehicle, maybe a power pole — and broke her wing, Watne said. The wing couldn’t be set, had to be amputated and still is covered with an aluminum splint to protect it when Lacy travels. Watne has spent hours working with the osprey and changing bandages.
Now Lacy is providing people a close-up opportunity to observe an osprey. Usually a raptor is only seen on the top of a tree, in a nest, or fishing. MWWRC even had to apply for a special permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service so Lacy could be part of the raptor education program.
Kids had many questions about the birds, including about their hearing and eyesight.
After a child’s story about rescuing a baby bird, Crow told kids a buzzard is the only bird with a sense of smell, so they shouldn’t worry about putting a baby bird back in a nest; the parent birds can’t tell a human has touched their baby.
Buzzards, however, can sniff out carrion from 10 miles away, Crow said.
“Buzzards are a waste-management system,” Crow explained, since they clean up road kill and other dead mammals and reptiles.
A few things kids were curious about were whether turkeys could fly, if feathers could grow back, how many feathers a hawk has (7,000) as opposed to an owl, (which has 10,000).
Since rescuing wild birds isn’t interesting to every kid, or perhaps the section was full, so Jeremy Bockus, a 5th grader, chose bike riding and cooking to investigate. In the morning, the kids and teachers rode their bikes to the underpass in Pablo and back. After their ride, they made pasta salads — one gluten free — chock full of vegetables from teacher Terry Callahan’s garden. Then for dessert they created their very own vanilla ice cream.
Bockus said the bike ride was “far” as he stirred a glass bowl of ice cream. Crimson Cox and Sierra Lundeen liked the bike ride, as did Xavier Pierre, who especially enjoyed going downhill.
In the gym, Dennis Johnson and Larry Richards taught kids some rudimentary boxing skills, with each kid sporting his or her own purple mouth guard. They practiced punches, on the bags and some even sparred, wearing head protection and big gloves.
Some kids had been looking forward to boxing all day and really enjoyed pounding the punching bag and sparring with a schoolmate.
Every year kids look forward to Healthy Choices Day. The school varies the season for the event so one year its in winter, one year in autumn and one year in spring, This way fifth through eighth graders experience a seasonal plethora of things to do.
Other activities offered this year included: hiking in Glacier, survival skills, biking, canoeing, swimming at Missoula’s Currents Waterpark, fishing, golfing, bike riding, cooking, whitewater rafting, kayaking, riding the zip line, swimming in Polson, museum tours, monster trucks, flowers (art), mentoring, photography, gold prospecting, geocaching, theater workshops, spa, pop art, mini golf, master chef, lacrosse, boxing, wild wings and watercolor.
