CREATIVE P.E. ACTIVITIES
by Kim Nygaard

Spring is in the air!! This is the time of the year where the weather turns nice, there’s more daylight, and everyone is thinking health and fitness. Well, we hope they are!

Fitness Testing
May 1-7th is National Physical Education and Sport Week. If you haven't already signed up your school to participate, check out the information at NASPE under 'upcoming events.' Each year at my school (Peninsula Heritage School in Rolling Hills Estates, California) I use this week as my final "gear up for the Presidential Fitness testing." This year I am involving the classroom teachers, principal, and the families of students to help get up and move each day during this week with activities that can be both challenging and fun. We will use class time, recess, and PE Classes to help the children realize just how important and easy fitness can be. I asked my students to help create an "ABC's" Book of Fitness, and we would do a letter of the alphabet each day as a warm-up. Attached is our alphabet of exercises.

1. The staff was excited to hear some of the "Fun & Fit" Breaks that they could incorporate in and out of their classrooms. I have listed resources that I found would help the teachers in their "Physical" learning.
   1. Integrating movement into the classroom
   2. Brain Breaks
   3. Songs for Teaching
   4. 10 Simple Activities to Encourage Physical Activity in the Classroom (second item down)
2. During recess we will have the walking club set up for the children to walk with competitions on who can run/walk the most miles for the week. Each child will receive a card and get punches for miles completed. Lunches will also be monitored, and the food pyramid will be discussed.
3. The principal will make daily announcements to start the day with "Get Up & Stretch!"
4. We will also get the families involved by offering a Family Fitness Night. If you are interested in information, I use the President's Challenge/Box Tops for Education program.

Hopefully by the end of this week the children will be enthusiastic and motivated to start their testing week.

After seeing the article about the low percentage of children who pass the National Fitness Tests in Grades 5, 7, and 9, I realized I also need to teach to those standards. This Fitness Gram Test was designed by the State Board of Education (SBE). There are 6 events:

1. Abdominal curl-up
2. BMI Body Mass Index
3. Mile Run
4. Push-Ups
5. Shoulder Stretch
6. Trunk Lift

click links below to view more photos
one two three four	five six seven

So, this year I will be testing my 5th graders also. We have not used this fitness test because our school is a small private school (K-5th). Every year we do the Presidential testing, which actually incorporates some of those same events. You can visit www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/pf/ for more info on the Fitness Gram Program.

I would like to share some of the activities and workouts that we do leading up to the physical fitness testing in May. When children are engaged in an adventure or fun workout, they try harder, have more fun, and learn that they are capable of self or team motivation as they move.

1. ABC Book of Exercise (mentioned above)
2. Physical Fitness Stations
   • Move at timed intervals to the stations that are on the test: sit-ups, push-ups, shuttle run, pull ups, endurance run, and sit and reach.
3. Deck of Card workout
   • Children pick a card and that is the number of pre-determined exercises. Face cards can be used to run laps or an exercise more strenuous.
4. ABC Push-Ups
   • Alphabet cards are spread around the grass. This can be done as a relay where the children have to move in push up position to collect one letter at a time to complete the alphabet.
5. Balance & Hold
   • Arms are out to the side at shoulder height with a tennis ball in each hand with an open palm and facing upward. Hold for as long as they can.
6. Crab walks across the field
7. Variety of endurance runs
   • Sprint 1 lap, jog 1 lap, spring 1 lap…etc
   • Run curves jog straights or opposite
   • Run 2 laps/sprint 1 lap
8. Capture the Ball fitness style
   • The popular game of capture the ball. Whistle commands will determine the exercise that needs to be completed. One whistle equals 10 sit ups, two whistles equals 10 pushups, three whistles equals 25 jumping jacks, and four whistles equals lap.

Iditarod Dog Sled Race
We have just finished our Iditarod Dog Sled Race. Each year in March the real Iditarod Race in Alaska takes place and is one of my favorite events to incorporate into activities. We had a successful, exciting, and fun two weeks learning about the race. We learned about things such as the changing of positions of mushers and dogs pulling the sleds. For an activity, I had the 25 check points set up, the sleds were long plastic sleds, and the dogs were the children. We started off our race in teams. The children had to collect items needed in their sleds. We had a blast!

We followed the race in Alaska (Iditarod.com), learned mushing terminology, and met challenges with road block cards to be chosen at each checkpoint. Some cards were good. For example, move to next check point, course is fast skip-two laps, dogs feel strong-move ahead of the lead team. Other cards were not so good. For example, moose on the trail wait three minutes, snow is knee deep- walk one lap no running, lead dog is sick-you must wait five minutes, and so on.

I included some pictures, and if you would like more info on this successful PE Adventure please feel free to contact me. You can also visit the Iditarod site for information. Each year they choose a teacher on the trail, and there is information available for educators of every subject. It's fantastic!

Other Units
Currently I am teaching my Survivor unit, and I have previously used the Amazing Race. I love the reality shows, and I incorporate ways to include these types of programs in my PE programs. The children love it and I get my joy by watching the excitement in my classes. This brought excitement in my teaching, and I even published a book called "Survivor…PE Style!" years ago.

Conclusion
In my opinion, in our profession we have the opportunity to give one of the most important gifts we can give any child. Physical well being helps in all areas of one's life, and we have the very important job to show through our passion what these children need, how to get it, and how to keep it alive for life. Like I tell my children, "If you have Passion...you have success!" There will be many obstacles to overcome, many exhausting hours, and even thoughts such as, "Why am I still in this profession?" The answer will be right there in each of your classes, in the children who participate in your program, and the satisfied feeling you get when things just work the way you expected.

We have an important job and I hope yours is truly as exciting and motivating as mine. Given the opportunity through pelinks4u to share our wealth of personal knowledge, sharing our ideas, and knowing what we all as physical educators go through - we can sit back and watch our PE Magic go to work. What better way than to live your life through teaching children the importance of Health, Fitness, and PLAY!

Good Luck. I would love to hear your comments or share your ideas with me about your successes and failures. We all experience these and learn from each lesson. Do we learn more from success or failure? That is the question you need to ask yourself. Until next time!

- Kim Nygaard

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