Tuesday, February 3, 2015

I have to be their PE instructor too?

In January, I sat down with "my principal" and we discussed our semester goals for THIS school.  One of them was to incorporate PE.  My kids already play, ride bikes, run at parks many hours during our school day, but we were thinking more focused-type Physical Educational activities....And honestly - I know Literacy...NOT Boys Physical Education!!

But when you commit to homeschool, you commit to stretching yourself and going out of your comfort zone, just to better your family!  God blessed me with 3 boys for a reason - and praise GOD he gave me an extra dose of Mom energy to keep up with them all.

With the help of my mother-in-law (which taught elementary PE), we came up with some great ideas to incorporate instructional PE into our homeschooling day.  And this one - I just have to share with you!!!

Obstacle Courses - also known as American Ninja Warrior around this house...LOL!
(Which starts back up in May!
 WHOOP! WHOOP!)


This is our New backyard - a boys dream, right?  SO much room, so many trees and so many perfect ways to create an obstacle course!

We started on Day 1 with just jumping from paver to paver...which takes some coordination!  
"Watch out for the alligators swimming in the grassy swamp!"    

Day 2 - We added balancing along the logs that line that paved area towards the back.  
"Don't fall off into the quick sand!!"

Day 3 - By this day, they HAD it!  I handed off the creative torch!  

Before I knew it, these 2 had created one sweet PE masterpiece!  They added a buzzer button onto of the top of their slide, incorporated their web swing and a few plastic chairs.

We pulled out the iPhone to time ourselves - using technology...check! And yes I even was timed and challenged! 

This was working and was becoming so much fun!!! 
Learning, imaginative play, and PE class rolled all into 1 = awesome!

****************** 
While the boys were taking a good water break, I rolled out a piece of chart paper and threw down a few writing tools.  

I showed them how to sketch out a quick map of the backyard starting with our fence, where our house set and so on.  I handed the pen to J and asked him to draw up the tree with the swing while Nix worked on the circle pavers (age appropriate, right?)  

Once we had our backyard penciled out, we rein-acted our obstacle course with 2 plastic spacemen.  This was a comprehension check to see if they remembered what happened  first, next, and last in their course.  

To my surprise...they did this over and over...and then "in reverse!".

"Now that's Homeschooling!" 




Happy Learning, Jumping, Playing and Creating with your Little Learners!

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