Promoting Trails, Connecting Communities
Passport to Winter Fun!
Developed by the Upper Valley Trails Alliance, supported in 2009 the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation, the Ottauquechee Health Foundation, the Byrne Foundation, and the Vermont Teddy Bear Company.
Overview
The Passport to Winter Fun is a program created by the Upper Valley Trails Alliance (UVTA) that is designed to encourage children and their families to become more active outdoors during the winter months. The Passport is an 18-page booklet containing a 30-step trail. Participants move one step further along the trail each day they engage in 60 minutes or more of physical activity outdoors. In addition to the trail, the Passport provides a list of ideas for winter enjoyment, a means to record achieving each new step through travel diary entries and drawings, and a series of incentives that encourage children and families to regularly spend an hour or more outside enjoying the winter. The 2009 Passport to Winter Fun program in the Upper Valley will run from the end of January through the middle of March.
Layout
The Passport is designed to be engaging and easy to use for children from kindergarten through the 6th grade. As in an actual passport, each child puts his or her picture on the first page. The Passport also begins with a list of winter activities that might interest children and help them get excited about being active.
The Passport trail is divided into levels delineated by winter animals. Each new level is associated with incentive prizes of free active fun. Participants begin on day one as a Snow Goose trekking along on snowshoes. Upon achieving day 10, participants move up to a Showshoe Hare on a toboggan.
At day 20 participants become a Winter Fox bounding along the trail. The ultimate goal is to make it to day 30 when participants can become a Polar Bear. Reaching the Polar Bear is a real challenge that requires 60 minutes of activity each day at least 5 days a week for the course of a six-week program. Polar Bear achievers win a free t-shirt and have the opportunity to enter the Grand Prize Raffle.
The Family Star encourages the entire family to get outside! If a participant completes his or her daily activity with a family member, then he or she may color in one Family Star on the Passport pathway. Twenty Family Stars over the entire six-week program will earn the participant a special prize for the whole family to use outdoors together.
Incentive Prizes
To keep participants motivated along the Passport trail, each new level offers a reward in the form of an incentive prize. Thirteen local businesses are providing free passes and/or equipment rentals (click here for a complete list of incentive prizes). Passes and rentals will give participants a free day of cross-country skiing, skating, swimming, climbing, tubing, and more. Participants may select one of these prizes each time they achieve a new level in the Passport. Each prize can only be selected one time.
Achievement Awards
All participants receive recognition for their efforts. Before they even begin their journey to winter fun, Passport participants send in an initial form. At the end of their journey- no matter which day of activity they achieved- they send in the back flap of their Passports. All students who send in both of their forms receive a special prize. Those who make it to day 30 will receive a “Polar Bear Achiever” t-shirt and are entered in the Grand Prize Raffle. Grand prizes this year include: two pairs of snowshoes; two season’s ski passes; an iPod nano; a Nintendo Wii; and 30 Vermont Teddy Bear Company polar bears.
The UVTA has distributed over 3,000 Passports to 25 schools in the Upper Valley. For information about the Passport program or to request a Passport for your child, please contact Kari Speer (). Don't forget to register on the Passport website to learn about special events by clicking here.
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