Preschool isn't too young to start

Willard L. Bowman Elementary School

ANCHORAGE, Alaska—Kim Rampmeyer's preschoolers at Willard Bowman Elementary School are playing a favorite game: Alaska Highway. On their little "cars" (scooters), they pull or push themselves around "road kill" (a rubber chicken) and through a "tunnel" (a nylon parachute). At a make-believe car wash, paper streamers hanging from a row of track hurdles tickle the kids as they scoot through, and a fan blows off the imaginary water.

Twenty-five percent of Rampmeyer's students have physical, mental, or sensory disabilities. That doesn't stop her from including them as fully as possible. "We have one little boy in a wheelchair, who has a tracheotomy and a feeding tube. He communicates by blinking and uses one hand to move his chair," Rampmeyer says. "But he always comes on Thursday because it's PE. He loves it. When we play Alaska Highway, we lift the parachute and the car wash streamers above him. When we do kicking, we help him move his foot to kick a 48-inch beach ball."

Physical education is hardly routine for preschoolers, let alone for those with disabilities. When Rampmeyer started at Bowman, she had no idea that she would be pioneering the development of curriculum for both. But when she was asked, she dove in. "I had no training in adapted PE, special education, or early childhood," Rampmeyer recalls. "I searched for curriculum that would promote large-muscle development and increase motor skills. Everything I found was based on imaginative play or one-to-one physical therapy situations. I observed the children in their classrooms and discussed specific disabilities with physical therapists. I learned. Now I make lessons for the more able kids and adapt them for the others."

The preschoolers work on gross motor skills by jogging or doing animal walks down a wide black line. By simulating tires, they do modified pushups. "We pump up as if we were a flat tire, then we have a blow out or a slow leak, and try again," Rampmeyer says. Preschoolers also do modified sit-ups, twirl hula hoops around their tummies, practice kicking and striking, and explore some basic climbing and balancing skills. Because many disabled kids have been carried by parents and isolated from nondisabled peers, they've had fewer chances to develop physical skills. For autistic or "globally delayed" kids, especially, the kinds of activities Rampmeyer provides are crucial to proper development.

Rampmeyer's older students engage in activities, albeit on a rudimentary level, more often associated with much older youth: orienteering, inline and ice skating, cross-country skiing, juggling, and snowshoeing. The district's goals include getting kids started on learning lifetime fitness skills. Rampmeyer's work shows that the elementary years are not too young to start.

She is especially pleased to have encouraged snowshoeing. "We have so much winter here," she says. "People are stuck inside being inactive for so long. But with snowshoes you can get out." Rampmeyer handed out information about snowshoes before Christmas last year, and many parents bought them as presents for their kids.

To raise grant money to purchase skis for the third through sixth grade, Rampmeyer had to make a convincing case that skiing could be made to enhance coursework in math. She did. "We can measure how far we go, our stride lengths, etcetera, and combine skiing with orienteering and map work," she says.

Rampmeyer's students are extraordinarily well behaved, and this is no accident. Rampmeyer uses Don Hellison's Levels of Behavior to make explicit to kids what is expected of them, from unacceptable behaviors (hitting, pushing, leaving without permission) to generous (showing concern for others, giving genuine compliments). Kids assess their own behavior accordingly every day. This approach has been judged a success by parents and other teachers alike.

Independence is encouraged in Bowman students, too. Entering the gym, they read warm-up directions on the door and begin on their own. Each student has a choice of equipment for many activities, and their choices become "theirs" for the duration. And they frequently have opportunities to create their own games and dances, which they show to their classmates.

Rampmeyer's work has long been recognized by grateful parents, but last year she received wider acknowledgement. After a rigorous selection process, Rampmeyer was named by the Council on Physical Education for Children (COPEC), a division of NASPE, to the prestigious position of representing all elementary physical education teachers from Washington, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Alaska.

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