Martha Lake Elementary students proud of role in new playground
Martha Lake Elementary students won a national prize for equipment
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Mark Mulligan / The Herald
Fifth-grader Muna Al-Mtowaq plays with fellow students at Martha Lake Elementary School on their new playground equipment during recess Monday morning. Last year, Anna Walter's fourth-grade class won a national contest that helped pay for the equipment.
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Mark Mulligan / The Herald
Students at Martha Lake Elementary School enjoy their new playground equipment during recess Monday morning. Last year, students in Anna Walter's fourth-grade class won $15,000 toward equipment after entering a video in a national contest.
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Mark Mulligan / The Herald
Students at Martha Lake Elementary School play on their new playground equipment during recess Monday morning. The playground was installed thanks to a grant earned last school year by Anna Walter's fourth-grade class.
Fourth-graders in teacher Anna Walter's class made a video and entered it in a national contest where the top five vote-getters won $15,000 toward their playgrounds.
The competition was sponsored by KaBOOM!, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit whose mission is to create a playground in every community.
The entire school banded together to vote for the kids' video. Students, parents and teachers all cheered with excitement when they found out they had won, Walter said.
"The students said, 'You know, Miss Walter, we did it. We made it happen,'" she said. "It was wonderful to see their pride."
Several dozen parents and community volunteers came out last month and built the new slides and climbing equipment.
The children are so excited they come back to class exhausted after recess, Walter said.
The facelift was long overdue. Much of the old equipment didn't even meet current safety standards.
Martha Lake has 630 students and is the largest elementary school in the Edmonds School District. The playground is open to the public after school hours.
More than half of the $89,000 playground project was funded by an Edmonds School District levy, said Katie Amodei, a PTA member and school volunteer. In addition, the school got $20,000 from the Hazel Miller Foundation, which provides funding to nonprofits in south Snohomish County. The PTA also helped raise funds for the project.
"I just feel like our whole community came together to support us," she said.
Amodei's daughter, Isabelle Simons, was in Walter's fourth-grade class last year. She was the narrator in the video.
"She feels like a lot of her hard work went into this," Amodei said.
It all started when Walter heard about the contest and decided to create a learning experience for her class. Each of the 29 fourth-graders participated in some way. They wrote the script, conducted interviews, recorded and edited the video themselves. Walter only takes credit for a little polishing at the end.
This school year, Walter is planning a project to create a nature habitat on the schoolgrounds. The students will do all the work themselves, of course.
Katya Yefimova: 425-339-3452; kyefimova@heraldnet.com.
See the videos
Watch the videos made by Martha Lake students and other contestants at http://tinyurl.com/MarthaLakeVideo.
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