Making Walking Fun

The Greening Tree Project

Greening a tree is a fun, easy, and illustrative way to encourage students to walk or wheel to school. The program uses different coloured leaves for each method of getting to school (buff-coloured leaves for driving in a private vehicle, light green leaves for taking the school bus or transit, and dark green leaves for using active modes of transportation). When asked how they travelled to school on a particular day, each student is given a paper leaf whose colour corresponds to that method of travel. The leaves are then attached to paper trunk which is displayed prominently in the school (the entry hall for example), and the greener the tree, the more active the school population is in terms of their transportation choices.

Green Communities thanks the Region of Waterloo’s Active & Safe Routes to School Workgroup for sharing this innovative idea.

Resources required for the Greening Tree project:

• Greening Tree Instructions MS Word (DOC - 74 KB)
• Greening Tree graphic MS Word (DOC - 243 KB)
• Greening Tree leaf graphic MS Word (DOC - 43 KB)