Increase Core Strength

Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans

Children and adolescents should receive at least 60 minutes of physical activity per day. TV and computer usage should be limited to 1-2 hours of quality programming per day.

A. Charades:

Students can either act out characters in a book for language arts or act out animals or the weather for science. They can act out places or important people in history for social studies. For math they can act out which items are heavy or light, tall or short.

B. Obstacle course:

Use hula hoops, balls, bean bags, containers, tape on the floor (such as painter’s tape), cones, wrapping paper tubes, towels, blankets, etc. Incorporate picking up balls, walking on a line, jumping over an object, tossing a ball in a bucket, crawling through a tunnel, squatting to go over or under an item. Let kids make their own obstacle courses!

C. Scavenger hunt:

There are many types of scavenger hunts. The easiest type is to write a list of objects to find around the house. Objects can be related to a theme, such as “things that are blue”, “things that are soft”, “things that are heavy”, etc.

Here is a more interesting version:

D. Music:

Consult the internet for any type of music with YouTube, Pandora, Spotify, etc., or use low tech versions, such as CDs and a CD player. Consider music that is age appropriate, but explore different types of music slow and fast, old and new. Play the freeze game by stopping the music and having the student freeze in his or her position.