Playground Rules

Bella Mente has created playground rules to ensure our students’ safety and to promote good social skills. Our playground is supervised daily by campus supervisors and school administration. We use positive and negative consequences to help reinforce school-wide discipline. We provide many opportunities for our students to become involved at our school and earn positive rewards. We recognize that students make mistakes, so we want them learn from these experiences to improve their behavior.

At Bella Mente, we typically utilize four types of consequences:

1. Reminders and redirection – if a student is acting inappropriately, staff will give a verbal reminder or redirection.
2. Take a break – if a child is losing self-control; they are told to go to a designated spot to reflect on their behavior. The staff will follow-up with that student and ask them self-reflection questions when they are ready to go back to the playground.
3. Loss of privilege – if a child does meet school expectations and follow playground rules, they may lose a privilege. Loss of privilege could include removal from playground activities, and/or special events.
4. Referral to administration – Depending on the severity of the behavior the school administration may determine additional behavior consequences are required.

Examples of Playground Games Allowed

• Jump rope- ropes are not allowed to be tied to the fence or other stationary item.
• Basketball
• Soccer
• Catch with Nerf or foam footballs Balls. Deflated footballs are not permitted.
• Gaga Ball in designated gag ball pit only.

Games and items NOT allowed on the playground

• Sky balls
• Tag- This game does not follow our school rule of “keeping hands and feet to yourself.” Tagging often results in student aggression and unwanted behaviors. Students do have an opportunity to play “tag like games” during P.E. and when there is a teacher to supervise the game.
• Gymnastics (flips, cartwheels, handstands)
• Tennis and baseballs
• Frisbees
• Toys
• YU-GI-OH, sports and Pokemon cards

Playground Equipment Rules

• Slides- Only go down slides, 1 person at a time.
• Play structure- No running or jumping off the play structure
• Parallel Bars- limit to 4 students at a time, flipping and hanging is allowed.
• Climbing Wall – limit to one student at a time per side.
• Hanging Bar- Students are not allowed to hang upside down or flip off the bar.
• Playground area- No running allowed, please run on the grass or blacktop