This year is the 35 th Anniversary of Jump Rope For Heart! To celebrate, Kennesaw Elementary School has put together 35 ideas for making your Jump Rope For Heart event successful. Try these ideas during your event! Special thanks to Emily Adams, Jump Rope For Heart Volunteer for Kennesaw Elementary School. 35 Ideas for Jump Rope For Heart 1) Pep rallies 3-4 weeks before upcoming Jump Rope For Heart event. 2) Color code the permission letters for each grade level. 3) Color code the participation hearts for each grade level. We use yellow for all kindergarten permission letters and participation hearts that hang on our Heart Wall. We use blue for first grade. We use red for second grade permission letters and green for their hearts. (We don t use red hearts for second grade because we use that color for the Century Club hearts. See No. 5.) 4) Heart Wall display for all participation and Century Club hearts.
5) Century Club hearts are red with a yellow ribbon. Century Club hearts go on the Heart Wall display just past the participation hearts. As the kids reach the $100 mark their parents send in a note and their Century Club heart goes on the wall. The student s name also gets read during morning announcements. 6) Recognize 100% class participation with a special heart on the Heart Wall. 7) Prize for 100% class participation. Kickball for the class is popular at our school. 8) JRFH pencil for signing up. PTA provides these at our school. 9) Earn one of six lucky ducks, including the Ninja Duck for getting your first online donation. 10) Century Club: Kids who raise $100+ get a special heart for the Heart Wall and have their names read during morning announcements. 11) Read morning announcements every day leading up to the event to constantly build excitement. 12) Show thank-you gifts to kids during P.E. class.
13) Let kids make promotional posters. 14) Weekly JRFH newsletters before and after JRFH event. The newsletter has sections for participation numbers; Century Club members; 100% participation classes; snack and transportation information; heart facts; reminders to parent about wearing JRFH shirts; and times/details about the day of JRFH. 15) Regular updates on school web site. 16) Bar graph for participation displayed in gym. 17) Show the JRFH video from last year s event. My co-coordinator is the Media Specialist at our school. She makes a video each year of our event featuring all the displays, kids jumping rope, teachers jumping rope, snack time, and check-in the morning of our event. We show the video at the JRFH pep rally 4 weeks before our event. I have several assemblies throughout the school day. I combine P.E. classes to make a larger group so the excitement feeds off more kids. The kids love seeing themselves, their friends, and their teachers on the video each year. It s very exciting.
18) Teachers With Heart special design shirt. 1. We create a special t-shirt that we offer to the staff for $50. We usually get around 25 staff members to buy these. We use their donations to help get thank-you gifts to kids who might not be able to make a donation. 19) Parade in Spring with top JRFH fundraiser riding in a convertible. 20) Jump rope team, The Grasshoppers. The Grasshoppers are chosen on the following criteria: skill, rhythm, duration, and participation in JRFH. Our kids are not required to bring in a donation to be a member of The Grasshoppers, but they do have to participate in the event. We had 24 members last year. We perform locally around our county at halftime of the high school varsity basketball games; at arts and crafts fairs at local churches; at the city parade and festival and at our school s P.E. show for PTA.
21) Dedication forms hung on Dedication Wall. 22) Local newspaper article about the school and JRFH (before and after event). 23) Article in our state AHPERD publications in Georgia. 24) Do a jump rope unit in class during lead up time to JRFH. Focus on individual, partner, and long ropes. 25) Allow kids to make jump demos to present at JRFH. 26) Recognize top five JRFH fundraisers at event. 27) Recognize top fundraising JRFH team at event. 28) Recognize top fundraising grade level. 29) Provide heart healthy snacks: fruit and juice boxes brought in by kids to share. 30) Upbeat music. Create a playlist with upbeat music, or have a DJ come to school to play music for your event. Our event is after school, so a DJ donates his time to play music at our event. 31) Encourage online fundraising while in P.E. and in computer lab. Since our school is only K-2, I talk about online fundraising and get the computer lab teacher to do the same thing. We tell the kids they have to get their parents to help them. As soon as I find out kids are doing it, I mention them specifically in P.E. class and let them tell others how easy it was for them. 32) Teachers jump rope with kids at event, as partners and with long ropes.
33) Encourage classroom teachers to offer homework passes for signing up for JRFH. We have a great, supportive staff at Kennesaw Elementary School. We have teachers who offer homework passes to the kids when they return their JRFH permission slip. The kids can use the homework pass instead of doing homework one night. We do not tie this to donations. We try hard to promote participation. 34) P.E. Show for PTA. Mention JRFH success and feature Jump Rope team. We are fortunate that our school has a night to feature P.E. at a PTA meeting. Kids from all grade levels are there and perform a variety of activities. The grand finale each year is always the Grasshoppers. It is the highlight of the P.E. Show. I have an opportunity to speak and I give an overview of P.E. and give specifics of our JRFH success. The last part of the night is when our top JRFH fundraiser comes up to open a box that contains our new banner (we pretend it just arrived that day). This gets the kids very excited. 35) Have a picture taken with all the kids in their JRFH t-shirts to be put in the yearbook.