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Promoting Physical Fitness, Grades K-5

Classroom Resources that Reinforce the Benefits of Physical Fitness

Found In: Health & Phys. Ed., PreK-2, 3-5

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Get active, stay fit and have fun doing it with sports, games, and activities described in the following lesson plans and resources.

Lesson Plans

Scooter Scramble
Students in grades K-2 are divided into teams with different color jerseys, use scooters to collect objects (only one at a time), and place the objects in a garbage can marked with their colored jersey.

Balance Stations
Students in grades K-2 practice different balancing skills at eight stations.

Survivor Island Field Day
Students in grades K-6 use teamwork and leadership skills to complete nine cooperative challenges.

Mission "Possible" Fitness
Students in grades 3-5 work in small groups to complete six different missions together.

The Playground Workout: How to Play Children's Games and Lose Fat, Build Amazing Conditioning, and Maybe Just Feel Young Forever
Students in grades 3-12 can get fit with two workouts comprising four exercises developing coordination, speed, and endurance. Good for circuit training

Lesson Plan Collections
PE Central: Lesson Plans for Physical Education Teachers
A collection of more than 2000 K-12 health and physical education lessons and assessment ideas.

Games Kids Play
This site gives instructions for hundreds of outdoor activities. Included are traditional games and jump rope rhymes.

Playground games in England
Some of these playground games are familiar. Some like Conkers and Please Mr. Crocodile are not.

Cooperative Games: The Ultimate Camp Resource
72 games that encourage teamwork and active participation from everyone.

Background Resources

Sports History
History, rules and ho-to information, including field and court dimensions, for a variety of sports from bocce to volleyball.

Sports: The History and Evolution
Modern sports history, including influences on popular culture and politics, and the origins of various sports and sporting events.

History of Sports: A Quick History of Sports
Hockey, football, basketball, tennis, the Olympics, and ancient sports.

Streetplay.com: Stickball, handball, spaldeens, and more!
Documents city games. Includes galleries of photographs.

A Short-term Longitudinal Study of Children’s Playground Games in Primary School (17 pages, 108 KB)
This study examined the nature of boys’ and girls’ games and the role of games in children’s adjustment to school and social adjustment during the first year of primary school.

Tools

Today in Sport
Events, birthdays and deaths in sport for every day in history from a wide variety of sports.

Sports Coaching Skills
Videos and animations demonstrate 1,000s of coaching drills. Free membership and registration for individual sports.

Books

Find these materials online:

Cross-Curricular Connections with Sports
Books connecting sports to other disciplines for students in grades 2-12.

Sports Encyclopedia North America
Edited by John D. Windhausen

Sports in North America. A Documentary History

Find these reading materials at your school or local library:
  • Children's Games in Street and Playground: Chasing, Catching, Seeking, Hunting, Racing, Dueling, Exerting, Daring, Guessing, Acting, and Pretending
    By Iona and Peter Opie
    Floris Books (January 2009)
  • Children's Games with Things: Marbles, Fivestones, Throwing and Catching, Gambling, Hopscotch, Chucking and Pitching, Ball-Bouncing, Skipping, Tops and Tipcat
    By Iona and Peter Opie
    Oxford University Press, USA (April 23, 1998)
  • The Lore of the Playground: One Hundred Years of Children's Games, Rhymes and Traditions
    By Steve Roud
    Random House UK (November 1, 2010)
  • The New Games
    By New Games Foundation
    Main Street Books (September 8, 1976)
  • More New Games
    By New games Foundation
    Main Street Books (September 9, 1981)
  • Best New Games
    By Dale Lefevre
    Human Kinetics; 1 edition (November 5, 2001)
  • Kick the Can, and over 800 Other Active Games and Sports for All Ages
    By Darwin Hindman
    Pearson Prentice Hall (March 1978)

Multimedia

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