SAM Magazine - McLean, VA, December 5, 2006 - SnowSports Industries America's (SIA) Winter Feels Good campaign and SnowMonsters are partnering to teach children how to dress for snow sports activities with a new interactive tool on the winterfeelsgood.com website. The tool is also featured on all SnowMonsters sites provided to more than 100 resorts in North America.

The interactive tool, designed by North Pole Design Company, helps children to understand layering and other winter clothing concepts through a click-and-drag operation that allows them to dress the SnowMonsters characters online. Each click offers a short tip as to why each item of clothing is important. The outline for this new learning tool, also available to teachers, was developed by SIA's Education Department and Jo Garuccio, director for the Ski Utah School Program and staff training coordinator for The Canyons Ski and Snowboard School in Park City. Garuccio is an examiner and trainer for the PSIA Intermountain Division and she has a B.S. degree in Physical Education as well as an M.S. in Health and Fitness.

The new tool made its debut at the Pennsylvania State Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (PSAHPERD) Conference at Seven Springs Resort on November 30. At the PSAHPERD Conference, SIA, Willi's Ski Shop, PSAA and Seven Springs Resort presented a workshop on how physical education teachers and recreation directors can include snow sports in their activities programs. The conference was attended by approximately 1,000 professionals in the fields of physical education, recreation health and dance.

"The Pennsylvania AHPERD was the perfect place to launch this new tool that will help children learn how to dress for snow sports," said David Ingemie, president of SIA. "We look forward to expanding this approach in the spring at the national conference for the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance in Baltimore. This is an ideal target audience for affecting the way children and their parents think about winter outdoors."

"It was a team effort," adds SIA's Mary Jo Tarallo. "The collaboration has gone very well."

In addition, according to Tarallo, "a lot of the teachers that we interact with say that one of the major problems is that kids don't dress properly when they go outside in the winter. That doesn't do much to help motivate kids to be outside when it is cold, so we have to go back to the basics. Now the kids can learn in the classroom how to dress, and it can be done in conjunction with a passport program, so that when a kid gets to the slopes they are ready."

Tarallo says that "the plan is to develop more learning tools for kids. We have the opportunity to teach kids in their schools, and really leverage the school so we can create a bridge between the classroom and mountain environment." \