Physical Education/Health

[inHistiming]

I am just curious if anyone has found a good way to incorporate PE and Health into the school day. We are in a new state this year and are required to document hours for each of these subjects. How do you get your children active? Our outside highs right now are anywhere from 34 to 45. Also, any ideas for a good Health study are appreciated. We are reading lots of library books, but I wonder if more structure in that would be better?

[beandip71]

I live in SoCal so my dc are able to ride bikies and jump on the trampoline year round. They are 3 & 5 so this is all the PE they need right now. HTH!

Gina

[Melanie]

Sounds like you live near me with those temps!! Here's a couple things we do...
We try to go out on any day that's tolerable (above freezing, light winds, etc.). My dh made the kids a "fort" out of haybales in the barn, with a ladder and milk crates and other "treasures" and they LOVE to play out there. So, he has promised to feed those bales last this year so that they can have the fort for as long as possible. This is a fairly warm place to play, climb, jump, run and burn off energy. Maybe you have a place in the garage they could use??
We joined a gym last year just so the kids could go and burn off some energy in the kid's area...well, we never hardly go, so we're not renewing our membership. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but by the time we finish up school and chores, I'm to tired to excercise!! (That's a really lame excuse on my part.) But, it might work for you...do you have a gym or a YMCA near??
Sometimes we do put in an excercise video or just dance around to music. At least once a week, we do ALL the rhymes from LHFHG up to where we are now, and they are seriously winded by the time we finish!!

We just read books on healthy habits at this point as well. At some point we may do Rod and Staff health. I think it starts in 2nd grade.

My state is not strict in what you use for these areas, as long as you do them and keep a record of hours spent. You may want to ask someone who lives in your state what they do.

This was really ramble-y (add that to your dictionary ) but maybe gave you some ideas!

[Tansy]

My mom bundled me up and sent me outside anyway... I was a upstate New Yorker as a child. We were wet dirty and cold as children but Mom always had a hot pot of rose hip tea for us to drink.

Some of my friends have to log hours and driving to and for was allowed. So she drove her kid 30 min each way to swimming lessons in the winter 3 times a week and that counted as 4.5 hours of P.E.

here are some ideas from my memory of winter:
Outside: sledding, snowshoeing, skiing, raking leaves for neighbors, shoveling their walkways, clearing the snow plowed onto your clear driveway, hauling wood, walking the neigbors dog, climbing trees.

Inside we played freeze tag, built forts from the couch and took over the basement and made it a dance party place Mom also installed a pull up bar down there. You can do areobic dancing streching, push ups, pullups crunches, jumping rope, hopscotch (tape on carpet), the dragon game...

but something as simple as taking them down to the local park and letting them run or play on monkey bars is P.E.

mom taught us about good health buy having us cook...
you could pick some 'good habits' and focus on one a week,
like washing hands have the kids make signs and have silly penaltys for forgetting. next week brushing teeth, 4 food groups. exercise ect...
have one build upon the other. in fact i like this so much I'm gonna start doing it in my house.

[inHistiming]

Thanks for the input, everyone. The "fort" of haybales sounds wonderful, I'm so envious! I did have each child take swim lessons in early fall, and our youngest is still doing that. My older two are involved, through the YMCA, with some homeschool classes each week, some of which are active. And, we attend the YMCA, for me to workout, 3-4 times a week, so they do get to burn off energy in the Adventure Center while I exercise. I know the YMCA offers sports classes such as baseball, basketball, dance, etc. for the youngers. I'll check to see what they have for older kids. My daughter is doing iceskating now and again after Christmas, it's more my oldest I'm concerned with. He is very smart, loves to build and read, but is not big on climbing trees, running in the yard, etc like my younger two. We moved from Florida, where we have 6 months or more of mild weather and only 3-4 of very hot weather, to New York where we're going to have about 6 months of cold, cold weather and just a few of warm, mild weather. It'a quite a change for us! We keep waiting on the snow to arrive so we can get out and build snowmen, and snow forts, try skiing and outdoor iceskating, etc. I know we'll find things to do. Thanks again for the suggestions.

[my3sons]

One year that we had a particularly bad winter, we did sit-ups, push-ups, running in place (or up and down the stairs), and jumping jacks. The kids made it a contest to see if they could do more each week. We also bought some exercise videos. Billy Blanks Taebo for Kids was a favorite. We did that 30 min. twice a week. Collage video (www.collagevideo.com) has a huge collection of exercise videos you can order online.

Overall though, we've found that just sending the children outside, even if it's only for 15 minutes, is a great way to get their hearts pumping. Sometimes I make cards for them to do to get them moving (i.e. run 5 laps around the garden, do 25 jumping jacks in the fort, pull your little brother on the sled back and forth 3 times across the lawn, do 10 push-ups on the bench, etc.). They thought this was fun for awhile, and then not so fun after awhile. Variety is the spice of life at our house, so changing it up seems to help. Hope that gives you a few ideas! Our state is not tough on that, so maybe none of this will help you.

[6timeboymom]

I'm here in the upper midwest, and I remember always being outside no matter the weather, too! My boys are outside all the time now as well. We have a YMCA membership, and three of my boys take gymnastics. My oldest (13) played football at the middle school this year and will play high school ball next year (and the next, and the next...lol!) We take family walks all the time, too.
As for reading/studying about it, we incorporate that all the time. We talk about dad's special diet (dh is diabetic) and they all help cook meals so we talk about servings, meal planning, healthy versus not so healthy, made from scratch versus mixes, etc. I've looked at the Bob Jones health series as well as the Rod and Staff things, but I haven't settled on anything! In all honesty what we've been reading is my mother's old health book from country school! It's also pretty incorporated into our science with my older boys. I mean, if you're learning aobut the human body it's hard to NOT talk about healthy habits and nutrition!