Is Homeschool Gym Class a Challenge?
Homeschooling has been a huge decision that parents have been faced with over the past few years. Maybe it’s a decision you never thought you would have to make yet here you are trying to plan for those daily activities. For many, even veteran homeschoolers, you realize that planning for homeschool gym class may be a bigger challenge than you thought.
So, what happens when you have to plan for gym class? How do you go about it? What should your goals be? In this article. We will give you some ideas on how to make planning easy and effective. You will also find some activities that you can use to help your child learn healthy living while having fun.
How Do You Plan for Gym Class?
Where do you start? What activities do you choose? Do you look for fun, to burn off some energy, or to teach your kids life-long skills that will build as they grow and will stay with them no matter their stage in life?
We totally get that and as a company that focuses on lifelong healthy habits of the whole family, we’re here to help with or develop a consistent curriculum, especially when it comes to Physical Education.
We have even created two free binders to help you work out those solutions. You can read a post about the Start Healthy Stay Healthy Active Kids Binder Here and the Summer Fun Kids Challenge Binder Here.
Physical education is a vital piece of a child’s overall well-being and is a required course in some states. Even if it’s not required coursework, the CDC guidelines recommend that children ages 6 to 17 do 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous daily activity. This is because keeping kids active is not only crucial for their physical health, it is imperative for their mental health as well.
If you are pulling together the curriculum for your family, look at homeschool PE like any other extracurricular. Set aside the time starting from the first day of school and create weekly classes by purposefully including gym time in your elective time slots utilizing a variety of activities. Even kids who do virtual school with direction from their regular physical education course could use a boost of ideas or a little at-home motivation. Read Why Being Healthy and Fit is Important For Kids Here.
We continuously recommend that everyone start by just moving. Find something you like and move. Easier said than done? Let our self-guided equipment help.
Self-Guided Products Make Your Time More Seamless
While a set curriculum or class design is optimal for homeschool gym class, let’s face it, some days, you are short on planning time or creative ideas. Enter the foolproof plan. Self-Guided products can take the guesswork out of those days when the plan just didn’t come together in time. With Self-Guided products, your kids can grab and go right to gym class in a seamless manner. Together you can set time expectations and routines based on ideas printed on our products.
Prism Fitness has many standard pieces of fitness equipment that come with the exercises printed right on the products. Simply assign a piece or two of equipment for a session, and the kids get to pick from the moves that are at their fingertips. It’s also a great way to create a fun environment and give kids a say in how they move their bodies, which can be helpful during chaotic times.
Make Homeschool Gym Class Fun!
Gym class for homeschooling doesn’t have to be a chore or a total bore. Make sure to get in on the fun. One of the hardest things as a homeschool parent may be to get the physical exercise that you want and need. Health and well-being are essential for homeschool providers, so get in the game!
These activities are designed with the whole family in mind so don’t forget to get in on the action. We know that educating your children is important to your family, as it is for all of ours.
Remember, teaching kids that physical activity is important for their whole lives should always be the main focus of any gym class. Starting with young children gives them the chance to love to move and doing so in fun ways helps them to see that it can be done in many different ways. Try some of these fun ideas below.
WILD CARDS
Grab a deck of cards and a few pieces of equipment for each student such as the SMART Stability Ball and Smart Medicine Ball. Assign a move for each of the suits in the card deck. Flip over one card at a time and have the student complete the number of reps that are on the card face corresponding to the move assigned to the suit. Jacks, Queens, and Kings can be assigned as 10, and Aces as 1 or 11, depending on how hard you want to make the session.
Try this:
Diamonds: SMART Medicine Ball Figure 8’s (Ball in front of the chest, figure 8)
Spades: Squats while holding the SMART Stability Ball overhead.
Hearts: Seated Russian Twists using the SMART Medicine Ball
Clubs: Seated Crunches with the SMART Stability Ball
JOKERS: Kid’s choice!
Homeschooled children can benefit from the social aspect of physical education, so if it works into your schedule, have them coordinate their sessions with other students via Zoom. You can plan weekly sessions with local homeschool groups, families, or organizations. You could also join others for regular activities such as open gym classes, group games, team sports, or fitnesses classes throughout your local community. It’s a great way to make new friends, stay connected to peers, reduce anxiety, and help boost a healthy spirit along with physical activity.
Here are a few more homeschool gym class ideas to try:
Pretend Kayak Races
Grab a SMART Stability Ball (kayak) and a SMART Stick (paddle) and pretend they are on a kayak adventure! If you have time, come up with a fun narrative that takes them through the jungles, mangroves, or a raging river. You can even have them add to the adventure by creating their own neighborhood, “Triathalon.” Take the whole session outside and add a short bike and hike/run distance after the kayak race!
Agility Ladder Circuits
See how many ways they can come up with to move their feet! You can give them a few moves to start, but let them help you identify the many ways they can build coordination. It gives them a boost of confidence to create and complete something that they helped come up with. Grab our SMART Modular Agility Ladder, and your options are endless. Set the ladders up on any flat surface and connect them together to make the fun go even further. Bundle these with some hurdles and really add some jump to your game!
Start here:
Bunny Hops
Hop with both feet through the rungs of the ladder. See if you can jump high or stay down low. Switch up the movements of your upper body to add variety. You can also use the low hurdles for Bunny Hop by spreading them out throughout the “patch” and hopping as you pick your daily vegetables.
Fast Feet
Play this as a beat-the-timer game or beat-your-previous-time type of game. You could also set these up as a relay, moving forward and backward through the ladders, or racing as fast as their growing feet will carry them.
Piano Play (think of the movie “Big”)
Incorporating two lessons in one. Yes, please! Lay the letters on the floor that align with the keys on a piano. Have the kids practice their piano while tapping out the songs with their feet. They can hop from one key to the next.
Obstacle Courses
Obstacle courses are a great way to include a variety of sports or a variety of games into one session. They are also a great way to build skills in a particular area or to work the whole body depending on how you set up the course. Obstacle courses are also a great way to spend quality time with your family. It helps your kids see the importance of having a happy healthy body. You can use any items you have from your home such as hula hoops, small cones, different-sized sports balls, balloons, pool noodles, bean bags, or whatever you have around the house to create a fun and safe environment.
Start here:
Hula Hoops Races
Lay the hula hoops on the ground and jump over each side of the hoop so each hoop gets two hops. After you have gotten to the last hoop you are going to return to the start line but this time you pick up each hoop and go through it with your body. for the second pass over the hoops, hop across them with both feet together, and for the return trip, run making big leaping jumps so only one foot lands in each hoop as you leap. You can set up the parameters of this course by having the quickest time, beating your own time, or by setting a timer and having them beat the clock.
Beat the Clock
This is a great game to use a larger playing field. If you don’t have that available at your home, it is a great way to utilize your local parks. Set a timer for a certain amount of time and have the kids go through the course in a set amount of time. They can repeat this until they beat the clock. Here are some ideas for sets on the course that you can set up.
- Use a 2 x 4 board and have the kids balance across the board
- Run to a cone at the end of your field balancing a balloon on your hand
- Run through a set of cones zig-zagging through the cones
- Step over or under a set of hurdles. Don’t have hurdles, you can use hula hoops, pool noodles, or streamers or ribbons attached to the tops of cones.
- Roll a ball and so it lands in the middle of a hula hoop or other small circle.
- Hit a ball to the “outfield” and then retrieve it.
- Jump twenty times with a jump rope
- Toss a bean bag into a bucket
Nature Obstacle Course
Exercising in nature adds a great element to your workout. The natural terrain along with the fresh air, sunshine, and greenery boosts mental health and well-being. Nature provides many of its own obstacles to get around and this one is fun for the whole family. It requires the observation of the obstacles that are already there to travel along a course. Some things that you may find are a downed tree to balance across or branches to duck under, a stream to leap across, a pathway to run over, rocks to skip, or stair roots to climb.
Homeschool Gym Classes Can Be Fun!
Homeschool gym classes can be a great way to ensure your child is staying active and healthy while also having fun. With the right guidance and a little creativity, you can create an engaging and enjoyable physical education program into your homeschool curriculum.
Watching your child’s enthusiasm as they take part in regular physical activity will be rewarding for the whole family. Not only that, but you’ll also have peace of mind knowing that they are exercising safely and learning important lessons on physical fitness.
You can see that gym classes can be really fun for the whole family. It doesn’t have to be stressful and with our self-guided equipment, it can be a breeze to help your kids get moving.
Start today and create your fun homeschool gym class. Need more ideas? Just reach out and let us know what areas you are looking for ideas in. Also, don’t forget to sign up for our regular emails to get more education for the whole family. If you sign up through the links below, you can get access to our Kid Activity Binders.
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