Resources for health, physical education, and fitness activities

Physical Education

Fitness

Using the Internet, a physical education teacher can work to promote a healthy, fitness-focused lifestyle with his or her school class by having the kids create blogs that documents their fitness activities. This is a unique way to incorporate writing and technology skills with forcing the students to document their fitness activities.

Promoting walking to school is an excellent method of incorporating fitness into one's daily routine. As the majority of students are unable to drive, walking is a realistic option.

Putting together regular fitness events for the school, both inside and outside of P.E. class, is a method of adding a unique twist of fun and competition to the idea of being physically active. Each event can focus on a specific activity or skill, thus teaching a well-balanced fitness routine.

Since families play an essential role in a child's overall fitness, it is equally important to educate them on fitness. One simple way to accomplish this is by organizing family fitness nights.

Students should be given a personal log and an instrument in which they can measure their total steps per day. They can the record their total activity against their total consumption.

Health:

As childhood obesity is the greatest health risk faced by elementary children, it is important that classroom time is spent addressing this topic. In so doing, the focus should be both on the harmful effects of obesity and preventative measures that can be taken.

Teaming up with a local Department of Human Services to discuss the importance of healthy and safe sexual choices is a must.

Working with the local law enforcement drug taskforce can bring in aspects of how living a drug free life correlates with living a healthy lifestyle.

When teaching these various health-related subjects to kids, because of their age, simply lecturing will not work. Further, many of these concepts will be foreign to them so background information will be needed. To ensure that the information is learned and understood, role playing, multi-media, guest speakers and small group conversations should be utilized.

Sex education at this age can be difficult. Dividing the class between boys and girls may prove to be beneficial and more effective at getting the necessary information unique to each gender across.

Physical Education

In order to teach the skill of cooperation, the game of Helping Hands Tag can be used. This activity promotes teamwork, sportsmanship, cardio-respiratory endurance and special awareness.

Using Team Jump Rope will teach both basic jumping and coordination skills, along with adding and subtracting. In this activity, students work together to predict how many jumps they can complete as a team per minute. At the end, they add up their totals and determine how close their predictions were.

The game Space Invaders teaches students how to identify and successfully pass a ball to a receiver. For rules, visit www.pecentral.org/lessonideas/ViewLesson.asp?ID=5871

The game Basketball Bingo allows students to practice basketball chest and bounce pass skills. Students pair up and each pair is given a basketball and bingo card. Students find tasks cards that correspond with their bingo card. After completing the task, they mark their card and keep going until they get bingo.

The game Catch 100 helps students with catching and throwing skills. Hoops our set on the floor and a different type of ball in each pair of hoops. One student goes to the hoop and throws the ball to the other person and so forth until they rotate do another type of ball.

To incorporate learning states and capitals while also working on fine motor skills, a game of Geography Golf can be used. Like Frisbee golf, students work together to create holes that represent a state and capital.