Working Physical Education into a Busy Day
We’ve all driven by the local public school and watched as the children played soccer or ran laps and felt that sinking feeling that somehow our children were missing something important. Not many of us have time in our busy teaching schedules to make time for sports, and even fewer of us feel qualified to teach our kids how to do much more than play tag.
Considering how sedentary our society is becoming, though, physical education is an area we cannot afford to ignore. Thankfully, there are ways to include physical activity into a basic school day.
• Start each day with some strength-building activities—push-ups, sit-ups, squats.
• Jump rope while counting by sixes or repeating multiplication tables.
• Set up cones on the driveway and have the children dribbles around them with a basketball or a simple playground ball for a quick activity break.
• Time the children as they run sprints and have them keep a graph of the results.
• Have children play catch with a tennis ball, moving farther apart each throw. Then have them measure where they end.
• To work on eye-hand coordination, have children hit a ping pong ball against the wall with their hands.
• Bounce a tennis ball into the air with a racquet facing upward.
• Tape Bible references on the wall where they will be a stretch to reach and have the children jump, touch a card, and quote the corresponding verse.
• Balance on railroad ties while reciting memory verses or poems, etc.
• Set ropes 3 feet apart and have the children jump from one to the other, moving the ropes further away for each jump.
• Play music from different cultures or time periods that correspond to what you are studying and dance
• Take field trips to batting cages, driving ranges, public basketball courts, tracks, tennis courts, or bike trails. Maybe one of the children will choose to pursue one of the activities you try!
• Get involved with local parks and recreation programs, Boys and Girls Clubs, YMCA’s, or private gyms that have programs you could get involved with.
Give your kids the gift of a healthy lifestyle for the future and the confidence and social contact physical education can offer!
On your mark, get set, go!
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Good ideas!
ReplyDeleteWhen things got sluggish during the day with my kids, I'd take them outside for a quick game of basketball. They usually laughed so hard at my attempts to play that they returned to the school work refreshed and ready to concentrate.
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