Kindergarten PE Games and Activities

Let's go PE Nation!

Today I want to share with you three kindergarten PE games that keep kids moving, teach boundaries, and build early math skills while staying safe and simple to run. We also answer listener questions about the PE9 book series and the ongoing saga of our inflatable mascot, Webster.

• top 10 kindergarten games overview and eBook link
• "Treasure Hunters" rules, sorting by color, and math add-ons
• "Gotham City" for teaching boundaries through story
• "Rollout" circle setup for rainy-day PE

Grab the eBook that's in the show notes. I know it will give you value and more fun games to play with your K-2 classes.

Enjoy,

Dave

-Kindergarten PE Games and Activities ebook ($3.99 for 10 activities)

-Check out supersizedphysed.com for more resources, including free PDFs, articles, and courses to help with your PE program. Please leave a review to help grow this podcast and keep pushing our profession forward.

-Team Building Games Ebook (with preview): https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Team-Building-Games-and-Activities-for-PE-Class-14063095

Grab my copy of the Outside PE Checklist as a reference that includes equipment, procedures, transitions, and other essentials for successful outdoor teaching

-Free resources include Substack and Medium articles with PE tips, games, and strategies

-High Fives and Empowering Lives  book available as an ebook or paperback

-Paperback or download: HERE

-Amazon Ebook: HERE

Chapters

• 0:10 Welcome & Episode Focus
• 0:44 Listener Shoutouts & Q&A
• 1:26 The First Book, PE9, and Resources
• 2:49 Webster the Inflatable Mascot Saga
• 5:14 How to Reach Us & Transition
• 5:25 New Kindergarten Games eBook Overview
• 6:39 Game 1: Treasure Hunters
• 10:55 Variations: Math, Taggers, and Sports
• 12:13 Game 2: Gotham City Boundaries
• 16:00 Superheroes, Villains, and Safe Tagging
• 18:10 Game 3: Rollout Under the Pavilion

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:10

Hello and welcome to the Super Size Fits Ed podcast. My name is Dave, and today I want to talk about kindergarten games that you can use in your classroom in your PE program. I have the top 10 games that you can use, and I think you'll enjoy them. So without further ado, here we go. So first off, I want to thank all my listeners from uh all over the again, all over the world. Um I really appreciate it. And we get new listeners all the time from different places, and I just want to uh continue to urge you to uh check out the podcast, check out the resources, and hopefully um just keep going, keep teaching, keep doing what you're doing. And um, I see you out there, you're doing a great job. So keep it up. And also, I had a question from there's actually a text line in the uh in my episode notes, the show notes. You could text me, although I couldn't figure out how to text back. So I'm gonna answer a couple questions. Um I got a couple questions recently. So one is the first question was what is my uh my first book about? It's about um a teacher, a young PE teacher named Jay, which is my brother's name. I just kind of stole some names that I knew pretty well. His name is Jay Carter, because Gary Carter was my favorite uh baseball player of all time. So Jay Carter, sounds good, right? Um, he is a struggling PE teacher, and he looks to find uh he looks to a mentor named Savannah, which is my daughter's name, by the way, and she introduces him to these other mentors and helps him get back on track by teaching him different principles, which I call a PE9. And so you can check out um not just the book in the show notes, but um I will send a link or I'll put a link in with the PE9 course. And there's there's even a free workbook and lots of things that I've uh created that goes along with the book. So that was the first question. Um love for you to check it out. It's just narrative form um of you know how to be a better teacher. Um if I could put it in one sentence um or have a better career and just look at it like a uh your job as a career and how you can improve yourself. So I'm really proud of that book. And my second one's actually done. I just have it's a sequel to it. I just uh haven't had it professionally edited yet or cover kind of thing, but I'm definitely gonna get that out uh at some point soon, hopefully. My the other question I want to uh want to answer, someone wrote about my um, and I appreciate this, you know, about the mascot, um, Webster. It's the uh if you don't if you're never seen him, he's my wacky waving, inflatable pool man uh guy, I guess, or girl. I don't know. I guess it's a guy because we call him Webster. And where do you get him? Um, you know, he was so easy to get back in the day. It was just a simple uh eBay, or actually that company, um, it's uh was it Big Mouth Pool Floats, I believe. But he's actually discontinued and he's really hard to find. So now I check on eBay every now and then and see if he pops up. Um, someone private seller sometimes you know has him for sale. Again, I keep calling him him, I don't know. And I just gobble up any any of them online because they're the quality is not very good. He again, I'm gonna keep calling him, call him he he leaks air. Um boy, it's it's very frequent that I get air leaks and I plug them and it just doesn't help. And I've had a lot of a lot of problems trying to fix Webster because I've bought a lot of versions of him in the past. He's probably probably on Webster 10.0, probably more than that. But now he's not as easily to get or easy to get. So uh my my latest thing was I was gonna stuff him. So I was thinking, well, if I stuff them, I'll have them forever. And so I had two, I currently have two Websters. One I stuffed this summer, and one I keep filling up with air, but he leaks. He's got a hole, and I just cannot fix this hole. So the one that's stuffed though, I I might have to redo it or something. I I stuffed him and then he's just too heavy. I mean, he's just it it just he has to have some form to his body. And it just, after you stuff him, at least what with what I use, it's just very heavy and awkward, and just doesn't he doesn't work as well, I guess, when I'm using him with the kids. So having a lot of problems with Webster. I'm just gonna lie, I'm not gonna lie, but that's my uh my two uh questions I had recently. So thank you so much for those questions. Again, you can send there's a little link, it says uh send us a text or something like that. So definitely um if you have any questions, you can reach out to me that way or um in my email that's in the uh show notes or the supersizefized ed.com. So um after that, let's hey, let's do a transition. Let's let's do a boomer here. We'll just transition. How about that? Here we go. All right, so let's get on to the main part of the day or main part of the episode. So I created another ebook. My lat my first one um was well, not my first ebook, but my first one in this series is about um teaching cooperative learning type games, team building games is what it's called, and that's on my teachers paid teachers um dashboard or whatever store. And that's in a different episode as well. And then uh now I have a kindergarten games, just kindergarten games, top 10 ebook that will be in the show notes as well with the uh teachers pay teachers. It's uh I'm gonna put it for$3.99, and it's got 10 of my best games, and they're not all my games, but 10 of my 10 of the games that I think are the best games, and a couple of them are I'm not saying mine, but yeah, my versions of the the games, and I want to put together in in ebook form. So my team building game one is$4.99 and this one is$3.99. And again, I don't always offer things in these uh episodes, but I want to offer some obviously for some free stuff too, some free content. And if you want to go further, um love to have you support the show in that way. So the top 10 games, um, I'm gonna explain a few of them here because I just I think um in detail this would be a long, long episode. So a few of my favorite games in there. One is called Treasure Hunters. Now I have a whole episode on Treasure Hunters, and I really enjoy it. I just it was just a game I I mean I can, it's my version, I guess, of it. It's like Taylor's version, it's Dave's version, I don't know, um, of how I have students, it's like a relay race, but I mean you can use it for many different things. So I just haven't uh I have a hoop set up for their, in this case, treasure chests, and the students have to run down, grab a quote unquote piece of treasure, which is usually a beanbag or a deck ring or something, or it could be tennis balls. It just if you're in the grass, you can use tennis balls like I am, or I I have the you know, I'm usually on the grass with this. But I think beanbags and deck rings are just better, they're flatter, or they're just whatever, they're better. So students go down, get one piece of treasure, bring it back, and put it in their hoop. And it's that it's simple, right? But I change up the locomotives movements. I'll say, you know, I'll demonstrate skipping or you know, sideways sliding, different little ways of movement to get the treasure and bring them back. And then we what we do is after the first round, at the end of the first round, they count them up. Um, and then again, this is kindergarten. You can now I do this with up to second grade, and I'll I'll tell you in this episode kind of how I modify it. So they count them up again, and the kids are really excited because they count together. And I also have them separated them into colors with the main colors, those six main colors that we all know. And I'll have them separate them into piles and I'll say, okay, who, which group um green is your largest number? And they'll because some kids will raise their hands and go, okay, who does blue as their main color or the lowest colour, you know, the least amount. So we talk about greater than or you know, the greatest number, least, you know, the fewest number, I guess, um, things like that. And then I'll have them bring back nicely. And then I'll add a tagger. So the taggers uh have to tag knees or lower with a noodle, foam noodle, and they just kind of slow them down, and the kids have to do like an exercise if they get tagged. And you can modify that too. You can change up how they are frozen or unfrozen and um all sorts of things like that. There's lots of different modifications that you can do. And with second grade, what I'll do is I'll have a mystery color. I'll and I'll either put um cup stacking cups behind my back with the six main colors, or I'll just kind of say, okay, it was yellow at the end of the round. Um, and what whatever color I pick is worth five points, and the rest are worth one. So just mixing up colors, mixing up some math skills, things like that. And yeah, that's I mean, that's how that's treasure hunters, but I also play treasure hunters sometimes with uh basketball. If if they make a basket or even a uh put a hoop underneath the basket, they make some kind of or the dribbling down, they get one piece of treasure, you know, kindergarten. And then second grade, they have to like make a basket, you know, first grade kind of in between. So uh I do it with hockey sometimes or soccer. You can do with anything, um, really. So treasure hunters is a very versatile game, and so I definitely wanted to mention that one that's in the ebook. So um, I'll make this a boomer again. I'll do two more. So that was the first one, and that was Treasure Hunters. All right, another one of the top 10 is called Gotham City. And I modified this one. This one I actually got from I believe Ryan Ellis from the PE Umbrella. He's awesome. You should definitely follow him. And yeah, his podcast, he's a great guy, and uh delivers a lot of just amazing content. So I believe it's from him, or I learned it from him. His podcast is called Superhero Wars. So it's it's basically that, but I just I kind of made into Gotham City, I guess. I don't know. So I wanted to make a I wanted to teach kids boundaries. And uh in the field we put out cones. So it's one of those games that they have trouble with understanding what why is there a cone out there? So they just keep running. And I teach them about well, here's Gotham City, this is where Batman lives. I mean, you could do Metropolis with Superman or whatever you want to do, or a different planet. Um, you know, what back to when I do treasure hunters, I'll make that the um treasure island, like the whole island is the is the boundary, and then the treasure area is the coned off area. So just teaching them boundaries. So in this case, Gotham City is the coned area. They have to stay within the city limits. And I'll demonstrate, well, you know, I'll walk out of the city, I'll walk outside the cones and be like, am I in the city? They're like, no. Okay, tell me when I'm in the city, and they'll start walking towards the cones and inside the box, and they're all like, you know, now, or they'll give me a raise their hands or thumbs up. So we're teaching them boundaries of the games, but by by calling it like a city, or when we do like a trick-or-treat tag or something like that, I'll say, Well, this is the street where the houses are, and you know, gotta stay in the, you know, on the street. But not that I want kids playing on the street, but just teaching them boundaries. And so in this case, Gotham City is the boundary, the whole area. And the villains have a like a yarn ball. I mean, it's really soft. These are really soft yarn balls, different colors. And I will say, okay, if you have green, you're the green goblins, and if you're purple, you're the jokers, and it's all the villains, they get the yarn balls. And I apologize, my dog was scratching the fence right there. So trying to edit this as best I can, but he she keeps barking and stuff like that. So, anyways, um, yes, the villains get the yarn balls, and the rest of the boys and girls are uh citizens of Gotham City, and they have to uh move around the city while the villains try to tag them. And I say they can tag them in a couple different ways. They can tag them like on the arm or shoulder with the ball, the yarn ball, or they can they can throw it underhand at their legs. And I don't play dodgeball games. Um, that's a whole nother, you know, episode. But this is these are some there's some, and I'll talk about another one in a moment, that um when we when they hit their feet or their legs with a very soft ball, I do some of those games. So in this case, yes, if they again it's kindergarten throwing underhand a very soft yarn ball. So if they get uh them in the legs, they have to they're frozen and they have to do an exercise, or they get to put their hand in the air and they get unfrozen by a teammate. Sometimes I do an elimination type game where they have to go behind a cone, like if the purple, like the Joker, the purple ball, uh they get tagged by the purple ball, they have to go behind a cone and wait until we get all everybody kind of out. So, and that takes like a minute. So it's it's not I don't like to do elimination games, however, some of these games you know can be if they're really quick. So um that is Gotham City, and then by the way, I could add taggers, which are the superheroes, which comes into superhero wars, that game, where in the final round I pick taggers that are um they're superheroes, they're the like Superman and Batman. They get to unfreeze people that are standing there frozen um with their hand in the air, so they and they cannot be frozen by the the villains. So that is Gotham City and Superhero Wars kind of combined. And now let's move on to the final one. So the final one today, again, this is three out of ten games in my new ebook, is Rollout. And I did a whole episode on Rollout recently. And it was my dog again. By the way, it was her birthday the other day, so I'm gonna allow this a little bit. So she just drives me a little crazy. Um that's peppermint. So in Rollout, this is a go-to game of ours by far, and it's actually been proven the past few weeks, um, ever since school started, really, since August. When we have inclement weather, I'd just say bad weather. Inclement sounds tough and tough to say. So inclement weather, when we have inclement weather, bad weather, we often go under our pavilion. Now, if you're inside, you don't have some of these problems. And I put out recently an outside PE checklist episode and uh article dealing with the outside weather conditions and other things that we just inside teachers don't have to deal with because that's how I've always done it. I've always taught outside PE. So rollout is just a go-to game. I mean, by far, we've played this a lot, and the kids love it, which is good because if we played a game a lot and the kids didn't like it and they got bored of it, then it would not be good. So, rollout, the students get in a large circle, and we have three large circles, which is perfect because we have three classes at a time under our pavilion, and they just sit in the circle and we put two standing in the middle of the circle. It's kind of like gaga ball, but they're not running around. It's two people that are moving inside the circle, and the other people are rolling and then not throwing, we're rolling the ball at their feet. And if they get tagged in the feet, the foot, they switch with them. So again, if I'm sitting and I said we tell them they have to sit like crisscross applesauce and roll the ball, because if not, they're gonna kneel or half kneel or do something and they can whip the ball. So they have to sit crisscross applesauce, roll the ball, and if it hits the the person in the foot that's in the middle, they switch. It's a real simple game. And the kids love it. And it's something that we do quite a bit when let's say it's raining, but there's no lightning in the area, but if it's raining decent, not like pouring rain, or if everything's wet, like we just can't use the basketball course because it's all wet, we can't use the field because it's all wet, the tracks all wet, everything's wet. We can use a pavilion, and this is one of the games we play quite a bit. Again, the kids love it, they do. And if a ball rolls, and we put two uh balls in the middle or they're going back and forth, uh gator skin balls. Um, you could do three, but that's that gets a little uh wild sometimes. And we teach this again to kindergarten all the way through fifth grade, and they all love it. Um, I mean, I'm maybe not every child, but as a as a whole, the children love it. And again, real simple game, and the directions are more detailed um, as all these games are in the ebook, if you want to take a look at that. So that is our three games for the day. And now it's time for your cowboy tip of the day. All right, so your your tip of the day is what else? Grab the ebook that's in the show notes. Um, either the team building one or the kindergarten one. This is more specifically talking about kindergarten games, and I think you'll really enjoy it. You'll get a lot of value out of it, and it'll give you some go-to games. Again, it's my kind of top 10 games, uh, depending on what you're teaching as well. But these are large group games for the most part, if you or they can be small group, and there's games in there for really kindergarten through second grade by using modification. So I hope you enjoy it. Hope you pick it up, and hope you uh help support the show. And that is your cowbell tip of the day. Thank you everybody for tuning in today. I really do appreciate it. As always, go to super sizefizzed.com for more information and check out all the links in the show notes that suit your needs. Again, there's kindergarten links in there, there's uh free courses in there, there's my book is in there, all sorts of you know, just things are in there, I guess. Uh, whatever your needs are, take a look. There's some free ones, there's some paid ones, and I just want to help put that all that out there. And you have a great day, week, weekend, whatever you listen to this PE Nation. You guys and girls are awesome. Let's keep pushing our profession forward.