Hello everyone!

What a rainy Monday! These are the days where I find it the hardest to motivate myself to be active. BUT as they say ‘Practice what you Preach.’ I will do some exercises today after I finish our weekly update.  The activities this week can be done indoors OR outdoors as most of the activities I share will be. I encourage you all to get outside when the opportunity arises!

This week’s active activity is one of my favorites! The AGILITY LADDER! I do not have one at home so I used chalk to create my ‘ladder.’  You can do the same outdoors, alternatively if you live in a place with a gravel driveway you can use sticks to make the ladder rungs OR you can trace the ladder rungs into your driveway. If you are indoors (especially today!) you can use scrap paper, cardboard, painters tape, even objects like socks in a line will work.

Wait! Coach Sadie… what is ‘agility?!’

I like to think agility is the opposite of clumsy. To be clumsy a person might be uncoordinated, move quickly but trip or bump into things. When I was younger I would trip over air as my Mum would say. Truthfully I am still clumsy. When we are growing our bodies are changing fast and with that change, our brains have to learn to adapt.  When I was little my feet grew really fast and I would trip over my clunky shoes all the time! However when I was participating in activities like skateboarding or soccer, I wouldn’t. The reason being I was concentrated and thinking about where I was moving and where my body was when I would do these activities.

Going back to agility- Agility is the way we move our body quickly, with coordination, and balance. When I practice agility I think of it as a brain and body puzzle because I have to think about where my feet are going fast enough for my brain to tell me what to do.  Here are some patterns for us to try this week!

 

For students who are in the younger grades, this activity is challenging but still great! To remember patterns it is important to go slow and try to make sure your feet go where they need to before you speed it up. Here is an alternative to the agility ladder that still practices coordination, and balance. This is the classic game of HOP SCOTCH!

• Level 1: The first person would begin at the starting line and would begin hopping on one foot when there are single blocks and when  there are double blocks they jump to two feet spread apart. Try to hop all the way to safety, take a break and hop all the way back to start.
• Level 2: Before your second turn you will toss an object into one of the squares. We use bean bags at school but things like balled up socks, small stuffed animals, or if you are outdoors a rock big enough to see would work. The person that threw the object must jump/hop through the course without jumping into the square that has the object. On their way back through the course they will bend over and pick it up ideally while balancing on one foot. *Make sure objects are being tossed underhand to avoid injury*
• Part 3: Change the pattern! With objects like paper or plates it is easy to rearrange where the squares are! If you want to make it longer you can keep going to 15 squares or 20! The Guinness World Record for hopscotch is 6,131 m (20,114 ft 9.47 in) including 1,518 squares! In France their version of hopscotch is called Escargot which translates to snail. The hopscotch pattern for Escargot goes in a spiral shape just like a snail shell. Use the pathways we have learned in P.E! Zig Zag, Curved, and straight! Go backwards, sideways, switching feet, use three squares size by side, make holes where you can’t travel BE CREATIVE!

This week’s challenge and calming activities will be in a separate post, soon to come! Stay tuned!