But then I started to make a list.
During one of my observations today, I started writing down ideas for gym class activities. Drawing on my extensive P.E. and youth group repertoire, I came up with some pretty sweet ideas, including:
- Mother, may I?
- where the wild wind blows
- the winking game (my personal junior high youth group favorite)
- bull wrestling (holla, Katie Snow!)
- a challenge whereby two teams brainstorm to come up with a way for 8 people to support themselves with only 5 feet total on the ground....then 4 feet...then 3...then 2... (that's from my post-high-school Jamaica mission trip)
- some variation on TV tag (animal tag? English-words-starting-with-S tag?)
- blob tag (another highlight of my junior high youth group experience...especially when it involved linking arms with a cute boy. SCORE!)
- duck duck goose (which, incidentally, is called "duck duck grey duck" in Minnesota...did you know that? it is! Minnesotans are kind of wackadoo.)
- car, dog, fire hydrant (again, a junior high youth group brainchild; it's an adaptation of rock, paper, scissors--except that it involves your entire body)
Y'all. I am getting so excited about teaching this gym class. What does that say about me? I'm pretty sure it says I have a very refined sense of fun.
5 comments:
Some tips from my experience with karate-wahs this month: Simplify games as much as possible, especially for such young kids. They can't follow many more than a couple of directions. Plus, they enjoy really simple games. They LOVE battle ball-ask me about that one. I'm sure it would be a hit anywhere. Relay races are good. Oh! and trying to get the hula hoop around the circle without letting hands go and timing it. Any game that involves a chance to yell and run and be silly, basically. OOH good one: running laps in the manner of various animals. My favs so far are monkeys and dinosaurs. I promise, these things work.
Oh man....I can't WAIT to hear about battle ball! I'm definitely going to have to consult you before I run a gym class. :c)
Hey by the way: when I comment on my own post, does it send you a "hey, someone commented about your comment" e-mail? Or anything like that? Because if not, I should probably start letting people know when I reply to stuff they say....
Nope, it didn't tell me. Good thing I obsessively check your blog :-P
So it's been a long time since I did anything resembling gym, but I *did* do a ton of theatre games in school, and I think some of that stuff could apply nicely to your classroom. This book has a lot of great stuff in it, if you're interested in that kind of thing. :)
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