Parent Training: Fun and easy PE activities you can do at home!

In this episode, Tiffiny shares tips for fun and easy PE activities parents can do at home with students of all ages.

Click Here: PE Activities PDF Guide (includes websites, links and videos)

Benefits to exercise include physical and mental health, cognitive development, stress relief, and socialization.

Try incorporating these exercises into a morning routine, breaks between tasks, or as a scheduled block of time.

Exercise is something the whole family can enjoy.  Encourage family members to exercise together or join in on local community activities such as a 5K.

Here are a few activities included in the guide:

• Jumprope
• Yoga
• Bodyweight
• Zumba
• Balance
• Obstacle Course
• Plank Challenge
• Animals Walks
• Stretching
• Hopscotch

Thank you for listening to the Sage Studio podcast presented by Sage Oak Charter Schools and hosted by Tiffiny Webster, M.A.Ed. We invite you to follow the show and leave your review below. Sage Oak Charter Schools is an independent study nonclassroom based TK-12 personalized learning public charter school serving students in Southern California. Visit sageoak.education for more information.

Sage Oak Website
Instagram
Facebook
YouTube

Transcript

0:01

You know that feeling when spring is in the air and you are trying to work, but you just get a little wiggly and maybe a little giggly. Well, I know that that definitely strikes around this time of year and one of the best ways to get some of those wiggles and giggles out and make sure that you are maintaining some great mental fitness as well as physical fitness is really to take some time to incorporate some PE activities into your daily routine. So today on the podcast, I'm gonna be sharing with you some tips and tricks that I have for some ways that you can incorporate more PE activities into your daily routine. I'm gonna give you a P D F guide with links to websites and downloads and lists of different ideas that you can try at home, as well as videos that you can see other kids putting these activities into motion, and you can see just exactly how to replicate these same activities at home in a way that is going to work best for you. I'm also going to go through some of the benefits of health and fitness and exercise and why it is so good for our minds and our bodies. And I'm also going to tell you a few ways that you can incorporate this into your very busy schedules. All right, so stay tuned. Here we go. Talking all about fun, PE. Welcome to another episode of Sage Studio. I'm Tiffany Webster, and today we are talking all about how you can help your kids stay healthy and fit, and get a little of that extra energy in some of those wiggles out right now while we are entering spring and they're starting to catch a little bit of spring fever. So let's take a minute and talk about why incorporating some fitness exercise into your daily routine is a good thing. Well, number one, it's going to improve your overall physical health of your kids, right? We want them feeling good when they are trying to finish up the last few months of the school year. So, Having some regular exercise and some fitness as part of their learning will really help them to continue to build strong muscles and bones continue growing, putting on that great growth weight. Another thing that's really helpful for kids mental health .They really can relax. They can reduce some stress, maybe they can blow off some anxiety that they might have. Or sometimes when they get a little bit of writer's block it's a great way to just alleviate that. Just doing a few jumping jacks or taking a break and going and doing 30 minutes of some exercise outside can really help them to regain that focus and maybe approach something with a new perspective when they return to that. So that's another reason why physical fitness is a great thing that you can do. Another is enhancing cognitive function. You know, exercise helps us to retain information better. It helps us to pay attention better. It helps us to recall information a little bit better and to transfer from one activity onto the next. So another benefit there. Also, socializing is great. I know that sometimes just getting a chance to get up from their table and spend some time siblings outside, or even just with you as their parent, but in a different or fun, relaxed capacity, can also really benefit them. And then a fifth reason why we wanna the daily routine is just to improve their self-esteem and confidence. When students can jump rope or they can ride a bike, or they can do a trick on a skateboard that they've been working on, all of that helps build their growth mindset. It really helps them to feel accomplished and to feel that they can do things that are challenging or they can learn. Things that they want to know how to do and that transfers over academically as well from the physical fitness. So physical fitness can be a great way to help them build that brain muscle for growth mindset that then they can apply to their academic work. So, few things that are great about physical fitness there. Some other things that we wanna think about is how do we really incorporate this into our daily routine? Here are some PE activities for kids that you can try at home, and if you wanna download the guide to get all of these activities, you can click the link right here. When you click on the guide, you'll see that it's gonna pull up to a list of 10 different activities that you can do at home with your kids, along with a link to a website or P D F guide where you can get more instruction on how to do each of these activities. And I've also linked a demonstration video, either on YouTube or on the different websites so you can have some fun doing these exercise along with experts, or you can just see how they are doing these exercises so that you can do them at home as well. So, alright, let's go ahead and talk about what is in the guide. So when we are working on PE activities, one easy thing that you can do at home with your kids is jump rope. Jump rope is a great way to build up some cardiovascular health in your kids. So jump rope is one of my favorite ways to do some exercise at home. Another idea for you is yoga. Yoga is really great in helping students to relax and to stretch, and it's something that you can easily do indoors. You can take just a few minutes to work on some yoga, or you can go into a longer yoga routine. There are lots of different videos available to you once you start doing some searching. If you are looking for some fun ways to incorporate some yoga into your activity, Body weight exercises are another great way that students can get a great workout in without having to mess around with a lot of different equipment. And in the guide I have added a long list of things that students can do from lunges to wall, sits to pushups, things where they're using their own body weight to build some core strength. Zumba is another one that is a lot of fun for kids. It gets kids moving and grooving and having a good time and just being silly. And again, this is a great way to just set off some steam. You can join in with your kids and do a little Zumba. You can find all different kinds of Zumba routines through all different types of music out there. So this one is a great way to have a lot of fun. Balance is another great thing and this is really a great one because students can do this in the house. They can do it out of the house. They can practice balancing on one leg, they can practice balancing on maybe a beam or a log if you are out at the park. So there's a lot of different ways to incorporate balance. And balance really helps with their cognitive development as well. So balance is a great way to build some strength and some fitness and also building a little brain power as well. Obstacle courses are so fun and kids love to get in on the action here. So this is where it can really be creative. You can create obstacle courses both indoors or outdoors, using a lot of things that you have at home. You don't have to have fancy cones or equipment or hoops or things like that, you can really just have a lot of fun by stacking up some cups. And using those as cones, you can create some weights with jugs of water that you might have. You might want to set up the stack of cans that students can jump over. I mean, you can really have a lot of fun and in the PDF guide, I've included a list to a ton of ideas for easy obstacle courses, so definitely this is a great one because the kids love to set it up as much as they love to run the obstacle courses. And of course, you know, get a timer involved. They love to compete as well. So, obstacle course is a lot of fun. Another option for you is planks. Planks is a really great way to build some core strength. And the cool thing about planks is, again, you can do it easily. You don't need a ton of space, you don't need any equipment, and then you can keep challenging yourself by increasing the amount of time. That you can hold a plank. Okay. One of the things that I still do to this day to hold a plank as long as I can is I sing songs. I sing songs like Happy Birthday in my head, I'll sing a song like the ABCs in my head, or if I'm really trying to go for it. I will think back to when I was in fourth grade and I learned the the States in alphabetical order, and I will still sing that song to this day, and it's one of the things that I do while I'm holding a plank to get my mind off of just standing there trying to hold it as long as I can. So try to do that too. Then it's kind of like a double whammy of doing a little bit of practice with maybe something that your kids are learning with also, you know, gaining some physical strength as well. Okay. Animal walks. These are so fun. Kids love to act like animals, so you can just do like little frog leaps. You can do some galloping, like a horse. You can do little crab walks. Animal walks are a lot of fun, and I've included some great ideas for you in the P D F guide. All right. Stretching is another one. And you know, if you have older students, middle students, high school students, just even having them participate in these stretching activities can be really helpful for them. I know that some of our older kids are working online. Maybe they're sitting at their desks a little bit longer, and so they need to get up and stretch. And these stretching activities can be really beneficial. And these are things that you can do in little bits if you wanna just do like a few minutes of stretching throughout the day, or you wanna do a longer stretching session, I've included links to some ideas for you. But stretching is really a great way to not only end a fitness routine, but it's also a great way to just take that break from your desk when you've been on your screen for a little bit, recalibrate your mind, recalibrate your body, and then you're ready to get back to work. And then we have hopscotch. Hopscotch is a lot of fun, and again, it's creative, especially if you have some sidewalk chalk that you can put out in the driveway. And you can create a nice hopscotch pattern. And then again, use this for maybe some math skill practice. Maybe you'll put some numbers into the boxes that are not just your regular one through 10. Maybe you. Answers to problems. And as a parent you could shout out like what a multiple, equation would be. And then whatever the answer is, is the box that your student would have to jump on, right? So you can get creative and have some fun. You could do this with spelling words. You could do this with sight words and there's some ideas for you in the PDF guide about how to do that as well. So another great way. And then if these tips weren't enough for you, some of the ideas that I were just talking about are creative ways that you can mix it up. And there's a link here on this last slide that's gonna give you a ton of ideas about how you can mix up your PE activities. So one example would be, maybe you wanna make like a. Bingo card, kind of a grid where students are choosing one thing from each column or they're trying to complete you know, 10 activities within a certain amount of time. That could be a lot of fun. Another one that you could do that I really enjoy is doing like a centers kind of approach where you have station set up where students can go from one station to another. That's a really great way to have some fun with these activities. And you can go from the station that is maybe the dribbling station. To maybe a station where you're doing the plank to maybe a station that's jump rope to maybe a station that is riding their bike. And by creating little stations that the kids are going to they feel like they can get in a good workout, but it's moving along quickly and it's making the time pass by as well. So that's a fun thing to do. And if you're gonna do a station, what I would suggest doing, As you come up with these ideas, just write'em on a little index card and then keep those index cards just, you know, in a Ziploc bag or something. And so when you want to go and do a station, you can keep adding ideas and you'll have that ready for you, and you won't have to be thinking about what to do every time you wanna set up some PE stations. You can just go through the index cards and maybe choose five for that. And you don't have to spend a lot of time with them either. Maybe each station is two minutes with one minute rest. Or maybe when you're there at the station, you jump rope as fast as you can for 30 seconds and then you rest for 30 seconds. So those are just some ideas to help get your kids moving. All right, so now that we know the benefits of some of this exercise and what we can do to be fit in some of these ideas that we can use as our PE activities, let's talk about how in the world are you gonna make time for this? Well, I've got you covered there as well. So here are a couple ways that you can make time to incorporate your fitness into your routine. Number one, do a morning workout. Take some time every day to get your physical fitness in and make this part of the way that you start your school every morning. So maybe set aside 20 minutes or 40 minutes, whatever works best for your family. Set aside some time in the morning to get started with your fitness routine. Another thing that you can do, as we mentioned, is the brain breaks throughout the day as your kids need a little bit of break from the work that they're working on. Use that as a chance to do one of these exercises. Maybe you work on a block of language arts in the morning, and then you take a brain break and you do, you know, 15 minutes of stretching. Then you work on a math block, and then after that math block, you take a break and you set up an obstacle course and you run the obstacle course. And then maybe in the afternoon you're working on some science. And after that you're gonna do some of that body weight exercise. So those are different ways that you can incorporate it throughout the. And another way would be to just set a dedicated block to pe. Just like you do for language arts or for math or for science. You could also have a PE block where you commit to doing some of these exercises if you're gonna do a longer block. That's where I would really suggest mixing it up. You know, maybe you do 20 minutes of three different activities, or you do the circuits or the stations like I had talked about, or use the bingo card ways that you can really create some choice and create some variety and create some fun and help make the time go by as well. But keep some of those, those resources handy, like the index cards or this PDF guide so you don't feel like you're having to create the wheel every. Definitely get the family involved. This is fun for everyone, including like the family dog. Get the dog out there, get mom out there, get dad, get brothers and sisters involved. The more that people are exercising together, the more fun it's going to feel and it's going to be a really positive influence. It's always great when kids see their parents out there exercising with them or an older brother or sibling. And sometimes even the younger siblings can inspire the other ones with a little extra energy. So make sure that you are incorporating the whole family in all of this fun fitness. And then another thing that you can do is take advantage of any local resources. That you have in your area. So if you feel like getting outta the house, go to a local park or go and see what different types of activities are happening in your community. Maybe your community has a 5K coming up that you could be a part of and start training for together. Or maybe there's a family bike ride that's happening within your neighborhood. So take a look at those community resources and see what's available for that opportunity as. All right, so those are some of my tips for staying active and healthy. I hope you are enjoying the beautiful weather out there, and although the spring fever is starting to set in a little bit, hopefully this is a good way to help your mind and your body stay healthy as we get through the next few months of the school year. Thanks everyone. See you on the next one.