Indoor Activity, Fun, and Learning! Fitness Professional Online

I have had the opportunity this year to have a fairly large classroom. And I have found that kids like activity in their learning. Presently, I have various sports equipment that I bought either at the Dollar Tree, Five Below, or on Amazon. Here is some of the equipment I have used in my classroom.

Soccer and Hockey:

You can buy inexpensive balls at the Dollar Tree or your local grocery store, and they can come in a variety of colors. For a soccer goal, you can pick up a goalie from Five Below that doubles as a hockey goalie as well. A few years ago, I bought a hockey stick and pucks from Dollar Tree but you can also make your own sticks using large fly swatters from the Dollar Tree or grab one inexpensively from Amazon.

Baseball:

You can get both bats and balls at the Dollar Store or Five Below. Use light balls, so if they knock into anything, you can be assured things will not be broken. For a batting tee or baseball target, you can get them at Five Below. Also, you can get gloves there but I recommend using the students’ hands since the balls are fairly light and painless. For bases, they also sell them there or you can use rubber dots. I double my exercise dots as bases so you can use them for two purposes. They can be bought either on Amazon or at Lakeshore Learning.

Track:

You can get an agility ladder at Five Below or on Amazon and hurdles at Five Below. I buy cones at both places and you can easily make obstacles using the equipment you already have such as chairs, large books, or desks. Masking tape is a great tool, as long as you take it off the carpet or flooring quickly after you use it, so it will not stick. Other obstacle track items include buckets from KFC or just cups from the lunchroom.

I have played many games using these ordinary and inexpensive tools in teaching various subjects as

Math: addition, subtraction and skip counting, using the stability ladder going forward or backward.

Reading: Have students step on, jump, or jog to identify sight words or vocabulary. This is also great to review science, social studies, vocabulary, or spelling words as well. You can skip, hop, or tiptoe to the media, initial, or final sound in a word or move kinesthetically to syllables, prefixes, or suffixes.

Language Arts: Have an obstacle course locating the correct noun, verb, or adjective in a sentence. Or have kids make fitness sentences and add activities to each word that is found in a sport. All nouns can be identified with a baseball throw, a hockey strike with a verb, and soccer move with an adjective.

Spelling: ABC order can be easily identified by putting words in order on the ladder, choosing the correct letter or word by using an aerobic activity to go to that word.

So get into the game and make your classroom a kinesthetic learning environment. You and your students will be glad you did.

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Christina Chapan

Christina Lee Steele Chapan is a certified personal trainer with four certifications from ISSA ACE, AFAA and SCW. She specializes with fitness for children and those adults and children with special needs. In addition to attaining her certifications, she is also a certified elementary and special education school teacher with a B.S. in Elementary Education, a minor in Biblical Studies from North Central University, an endorsement in Special Education, and an M.A. in Curriculum and Development from Governors State University. Her passion is for training the future of tomorrow. She is available for training, speaking and writing.