Family Fitness Time Giveaway

I've mentioned in previous posts how difficult I find doing P.E. in homeschool. Well, I must tell you about a wonderful giveaway over at Confessions of a Homeschooler! She recently reviewed what looks like a perfect P.E. program for homeschool. It's called Family Time Fitness. You have to go read her review. This program looks amazing...and easy...and FUN! They are offering two of their Core Curriculum and workbooks Vol 1-4 in this giveaway, so visit Confessions of a Homeschool to enter. You can enter through October 7.

Homeschool P.E.

“How do you do P.E.?”  It’s a question I’ve been asked more than once by non-homeschoolers.  I’ll admit it’s a rather challenging school subject for me, for two big reasons.  1)  I personally am NOT the least bit athletic.  I never participated in sports, and P.E. was always my most hated school subject.  My husband is fairly athletic, but he doesn’t often have time to do P.E. for me.  2)  We live in England.  How is that challenging?  First of all, the weather is not often on our side.  It rains a lot.  Then when the rain quits, the ground is muddy.  If we have a nice dry spell, then we take advantage of our outdoor time.  Secondly, our back garden (backyard) is rather small.  Actually, we feel quite blessed that it’s as big as it is, because some people here don’t have back gardens at all!  Our trampoline takes up the middle third of our garden, so that doesn’t leave much P.E. space (although the trampoline itself IS nice for P.E.).  Thirdly, we have no large rooms in our house, so even indoor P.E. can be challenging.  Sometimes, it feels easiest to skip P.E. altogether.  But we keep trying.

A few solutions?  1)  The church we worked with for 5 years is within easy walking distance of our house, and they have a gymnasium.  I’m hoping to get my husband to ask permission to use it on afternoons when it’s not being used by others.  That would help.  2)  Down the street we have a park with a large field.  On non-muddy days, we can use that and have it pretty much to ourselves (since most other kids are in school and won’t be using it).  3)  I’ve researched and found some P.E. ideas that will work in smaller indoor spaces.  4)  We could pay for my kids to take some sort of lessons.  They did take swimming lessons for a year, and I would love to have them do that again.  The problems with that?  First, the cost of the lessons are just not in our budget.  Also, the place the kids were taking lessons (which we LOVED) closed down, and you can be on a waiting list for a year or more to get lessons at a different place.  I would also love to get them gymnastics lessons, but again, we simply can’t afford it.

Thoughts on competitive sports:  Now let me just say that I think it’s great when homeschooled children can take lessons of some sort or get to participate in competitive sports.  I have nothing at all against that.  If I had the opportunity (which I don’t), I’d let my kids do that.  I know some homeschoolers are against competitive sports, and I know others love it.  I personally see nothing wrong with it as long as the child enjoys it and it doesn’t distract from academics.  However, I also don’t believe that being involved in competitive sports is necessary.  I feel that especially at the elementary level, what’s important in P.E. is that children get exercise.  It’s not as important to me at this point whether or not they learn sports skills or rules.  That would be great if we could do it, but I’m not going to feel like I’ve failed my children because they can’t.  So I guess that’s where my P.E. program is right now…just making sure they get exercise and have fun doing it.

So, how do I do this? 

1)  A few years ago, I put together a P.E. book for my family.  It’s basically a collection of activities I found in books and online that I felt we could do, based on space, equipment, and number of students.  I divided them up by equipment used, by skills needed or learned, and by space needed.  I haven’t really used it much, but I’m going to start it up again. 

2)  I’ve been collecting basic P.E. equipment since we’ve lived in England.  I look for stuff that’s on sale in stores, or I keep an eye out for stuff at charity shops.  For instance, I have a balance board, a lawn bowling set, and an exercise mat I bought cheap at charity shops.  Isaac found a baseball bat and glove cheap at a yard sale in the US (and we managed to pack them in our luggage).  It’s amazing how cheaply you can buy P.E. equipment if you keep your eyes open.  Here’s a list of what we currently have in our P.E. box:

Balance board, balls of all sorts, bats, baton, beanbags, bowling set, carpet squares, cones, croquet set, egg and spoon race set, exercise mat, frisbees, hoops, jumping ropes, potato sacks, racquets, scoop ball set, three-legged race cords, whistle, tape measure (for track and field events), a timer, and lawn bowling set.

3)  I keep my eyes open for anything different that we can use in P.E.  Here are some items my kids enjoy:

Trampoline—This is one of the best things we’ve ever purchased for the kids.  For safety reasons, I would never recommend buying one without the padding and netting.  The kids jump on it as often as we have decent weather, and it’s very good exercise.

Wii—Yes, the wii.  Does that qualify as exercise?  Really?  It is, after all, simply a video game system.  I only use it every now and then as a P.E. tool because I feel that by playing the sports games on Wii they can get an idea of how various sports are played.  So, while it may not be very much exercise, they are learning about sports.  The boxing game is one they DO get exercise on.  If you know of any others (other than the Wii Fit, which is too expensive right now), please let me know.  We have the sports disk that came with the Wii system, and we also have Sports Party.

Games—There are several games out there that are very good for P.E. and can be used indoors.  Here’s our list so far:  Twister, Elefun, and Hyper Dash.  Also, I have just purchased (for Christmas) the Twister Hopscotch Game.  I’d love to find more!

Bicycle/Tricycle/Scooter—Isaac just got a bicycle for his birthday…he does not know how to ride yet.  We also have a tricycle which I can teach Gabriela to use, and Moriah is getting a scooter for Christmas.  These will all be good for P.E. once the weather improves (which may not be for awhile).

Dance—I have 2 ballet DVDs for the girls (I’m a Ballerina Now and Bella Dancerella: Let’s Dance !) and 2 dance DVDs (Kidsongs: Dance and All-Time Favorite Dances).  I highly recommend the All-Time Favorite Dances one.  They teach the dances on the DVD, and then you dance along.  The kids love it!  I also purchased and downloaded a selection of fun songs from Amazon and made a CD they can free-dance to.

Now the question:  What do YOU do for P.E. in your homeschool?  I really want to know, because I would love to have more ideas.  Have you found any fun games that I didn’t mention?  How do your kids get exercise?  Do your kids get to participate in team sports or take lessons?  What’s on your list of “must-have equipment” for P.E.?  I want to hear from you!