PHYSICAL EDUCATION AT HOME

Physical Education can sometimes get overlooked in a homeschooling environment so this year I have been looking at introducing a "formal PE curriculum" into our days. In the past we have been using fitness DVD's, horse riding, swimming and ballet to complete our fitness routine but this is generally done in the afternoons. Also the children then become proficient in one area but may be lacking in another, such as ball skills, or balance, etc. A good program should cover all aspects of physical activity.

I really like the idea of doing something first thing in the morning, so for the past week we have been using a free trial from Family Time Fitness which is a purpose made course for homeschoolers. This program was put together by Dr. Peter Minke, a Health & Wellness Expert, Mike Hanik, Professor of Kinesiology at Texas A&M and Youth Fitness Specialist and Jeremiah Knopp a Certified Fitness Trainer & Nutritionist.

Here they are doing some of the routine from one of the days.

You get an email once a month with all the exercises to do on that specific day, i.e. day1, day 2 and so on. They supply a program for five days a week but you can just pick and choose how many days you use it. The program differs each day of the year, so there is a balance of activities. They can be performed in the house and also outside on nice days.  They include a warm up and warm down which is great for children to learn as too often they just go into something without doing either.

The ropes got further and further apart and they tried to see how far they could jump.

Links are supplied to U-Tube showing how to perform some of  the exercises, which is fabulous as sometimes written instructions can be hard to work out. I like that they also give you a sheet to assess your child's fitness, stretching and jumping capabilities, etc. Then you can re-assess them them every 6-8 weeks to see how they have improved.

If you are in OZ or NZ you should be aware that measurements are all imperial (jump 6 inches, run 1/4 mile, etc) but hopefully they will look at introducing a metric system in the near future.

I don't think we will purchase it this year as it is very costly, US 99 even though they did kindly offer a US 20 voucher to be used on the program.

This year I will simply put together a program myself which will incorporate many different morning exercise and activities (trampoline, cycling, walking, DVD's) til such a time that we can afford this.

Family Fitness Time also sell some Discovering Physical Education work books which look great. "Examples of Activities can include: Alphabet Soup, Crossword, Decoding, Hidden Letters, Magic Square, Matching, Missing Letters, Spelling Challenge, Secret Trails, Spiral, Study Sheets, Coloring, Word Jumbles, Word Links, Word Search, Word Shapes, Framework, Alphabetical Order, Spelling Quest, and many more. These workbooks help with understanding not only the proper meaning of Physical Education, Nutrition, Anatomy and General Fitness but will also help with reading, spelling and Kinesiology." (taken from their website). The work books are based on age levels, K-1st, 2nd-3rd and 4th-5th and there are some samples on their web site also. These are quite affordable, especially if you purchase the four different books for the year level. We will definitely be investing in these.

If you are interested in either the work books or fitness program, you can find further details on their site http://www.familytimefitness.com/