Category Archives: Kindergarten

Week of 6/1-6/7 FIELD DAY WEEK!!!!!

Helllooooooo LES Families!

This week is Field Day (week)!!!!!!! I have created a virtual Field Day because NO CHILD should go a school year without Field Day!! That would be so disappointing. SO! All households are encouraged to get outside and play together as a unit. This was created for all ages and abilities! If you do not have equipment listed NO PROBLEM! Most objects will be able to be used universally and interchanged. Be creative with the things you have, do not go to the stores to buy equipment! If you have ANY issues or confusions PLEASE email me at Graham@Leverettschool.org and I will happily assist!

Happy Field Day everyone!

Coach Sadie

Week of May 25- May 31

Gooooood Afternoon LES!

This week’s lesson is a special lesson! Typically during Field Day, our sixth grade students face off the teachers in a volleyball match. Though I have never experienced this at LES I thought it was important to give our 6th graders a lesson dedicated to them as this moment we would be cheering for our peers.

SO Let’s talk about Volleyball! Did you know that Volleyball was originally called Mintonette? Did you know it was invented in Springfield, Massachusetts as a hopeful alternative to basketball; to encourage people who were older to continue to exercise and play in an activity that was no contact? DID YOU FURTHER KNOW that the inventor of Volleyball AND Basketball were friends and they went to the same high school -Mt. Hermon Prepatory School in Northfield Massachusetts?! How amazing is that! SO much local history!

Because we will be learning volleyball in quarantine, it will be difficult to learn the physical game, so I will give you the basics and ways to practice at home!

The BASIC Rules

-6 people on each side of the net, lined up in two rows of 3 people

-3 Touches on your side ONLY- ball must be hit to other side by 3rd touch

-A person cannot hit the ball two times in a row

-If the ball touches the ground on the other teams side, inside the boundary it is a point for the hitting team.

-If the ball hits on the line it is considered IN

-You cannot catch or throw the ball

-You CAN use any body part… however I am not teaching that in this lesson

-Volleyball net height is 7 foot, 4 and 1/8 inches! Please use a 4-6ft net height to have best results !

Let’s get to it!

The first thing we need to learn about volleyball is that we use only our arms and hands to strike the ball. The main types of touches are the underhand serve, overhand serve, bump, set, and spike.

We have learned about underhand striking and overhand striking with paddles, so now let’s learn with hands!

Underhand Serve

Wait, what is a serve? A serve is the way in which we send the ball to the other team and begin the game. These will be important when we learn how to play with a net as the ball needs to go OVER the net! If the ball hits the net but goes to the other side it is considered playable. For this lesson’s purposes if you have a way to mark a line on the ground or use a clothesline or hang a string in your yard just above your head, and can hang a towel over it you’ll be able to visually see where your target is.

The serve itself requires you to hold the ball with your non-htting hand. You will hold it between your waist and shoulders. Your feet will be set to hitting with your dominant hand- for my my dominant hand is my left hand, I will step with my right foot forward and right foot back- it is the opposite for righty’s. You will now swing with your dominant hand and aim to hit the ball in the CENTER. Use an open hand for precision and a closed fist for power. I like the open hand option. As you step and wind up to hit the ball, make sure you drop your opposite hand so the ball is free to be hit. Once you hit the ball it should now go over the net! You should stand about 10 feet away from your target JUST TO PRACTICE. Eventually we will work our way to the end line. To practice this you will start by dropping the ball to yourself, and striking it over your target. If you have someone to play with have them stand on the opposite side to retrieve, and they can then serve it back to you! If you need to use a wall, you can practice serving to the wall, soon we will be able to learn about other returns to keep you going at the wall!

Animated GIF  Animated GIF

Overhand Serve

This serve is more common and is slightly tricky. For this serve you will have the same footing and hold the ball with the same hand. You will ONLY hit with an open hand for this, like you are high fiving the ball!  You will now toss the ball UP above your head slightly, and in line with your striking hand. You will need to be gentle because if the ball spins, it will go in the direction that it is spinning and you will lose control. You will now try to hit the ball over the net by tossing the ball up to your striking hand, and stepping OR jumping and hitting the ball over hand. To get comfortable with the toss, practice at least 10 times tossing to yourself getting the ball about 2 feet over your head, and having it land right in front of the hand you would hit with. This is the most important part, a toss too far away you will miss or the ball will go to the ground because you will hit too late, a toss too high and fast will cause you to hit the ball too soon making it go to the sky! This is an important one to practice as it is similar to the spike which is a difficult hit we will learn about soon! Practice this with someone OR a wall!  Practice 10 tosses to yourself and then 5-10 minutes of serves.

Animated GIF

BUMP

The bump is really important for receiving the ball, passing the ball as well as setting the ball if you don’t have the option to hand set- we will talk about shortly! A bump is when we place our fingers into our other hand and place our thumbs next to each other. We do not make a fist with our two hands! We use our forearms to strike the ball. The best way to practice this is to use your buddy to throw the ball in your direction. You will want to get lower than the ball, and set yourself up to receive the ball in the middle of your forearms. Here you will use a light to medium force to hit the ball. You are either aiming to pass to a team mate (using a lighter force because they are close to you) or just bumping it over the net to get it out of your side. To practice this- find your buddy and have them toss the ball to you, try to get below the ball, and return it to them 10 times.

     Animated GIF

Setting

This is important because it gets the ball ready to be hit over the net- this is another type of pass. You will take your hands and place them over your head and bend your elbows, the ball will be coming toward you at a high level above your head. You want your elbows out, and your hands in position to flick away from each other. You want every finger to be in contact with the ball. When the ball comes to you, your hands will catch it like it is catching an egg or water balloon, lightly so you don’t break them, and then flicking up with your fingers and hands flicking away, this will lead the ball back up but without spins or speed. This makes it easier for the next person to spike! Now practice this by doing 10 short hand sets to yourself, keep the ball going don’t let it fall to the ground, then do 10 taller sets without the ball dropping. It is hard to time your body positioning below the ball try each one and find which way you like better! With your buddy see if they can bump you the ball, then you can set it! Now see if you can bump to your buddy and they can set it! The next hit is the spike ! Everyone loves a good spike…

Animated GIF

Spike

Spiking is really important but a tough skill to learn! This skill requires you to jump pretty high, and time your strike with your hand so that you hit the ball over the net. To spike the ball you will need momentum or a leaping start, you will only take 3-4 leaps towards the net, and jump up as the ball is being set to you, wind up your arm over and behind your head, hit it with the center of your hand, in a downward motion over the net. For this to work well for us you will not want to use a regulation volleyball net, you will want to have your net at about 4-5ft high depending on how tall you are to get these skills down.

Spikeball

Another GREAT summer game and one of my favorite sports is Spikeball. This is something I am really excited to introduce to LES hopefully next year! If you have a Spikeball net at home, AWESOME! Anyone can play and it’s hours of endless fun. If you do NOT have a net but have a hula hoop and a playground ball YOU CAN STILL PLAY! If you don’t have a hula hoop you can use a rope to make a circle using the rope as the rim or just draw a 3ft circle on the ground with chalk. Here’s some videos on how to play!

Spikeball Basics

Spikeball for PK-2

*Note for PK-2 these skills ARE advanced. Slow down each skill and make everything smaller. Use a beach ball, or balloon, work on hitting it to yourself and keeping control. Try each skill focusing on the underhand, set, and bump as the focus points. *

6th Grade Shout Out!

To our sixth graders I am so sad I didn’t get to coach you all in the Volleyball game this year. I am confident you would have been an incredible team and would have given teachers a tough match! I wish you all the best in your bright futures heading to middle school, I can’t wait for you all to visit and I hope you have an incredible summer!

NEXT WEEK IS VIRTUAL FIELD DAY!!!! STAY TUNED!

 

Have a healthy and active week!

Coach Sadie

May 18th-May 24th

Hello everyone!!

We are going to have incredible weather this week. PLEASE PLEASE do your best to get outside, wear sunscreen, hydrate, and take in all of that Vitamin D from the sun!

This week I would like to talk about warm up’s and stretching. Before every class we always do an active activity that has few instructions and we move our bodies from 5-6 minutes before we begin our lesson of the day.  Have you noticed how we never do ‘static’ stretching before? If you play sports or do activities that require movement usually your coach will have you sit in a circle and count to 10 while holding positions. Why is that?

WELL! Let’s think, if we just came to PE after sitting for a long time our bodies are tired, and probably a little sore. I know my back and bottom has been sore sitting at my desk chair at home during this pandemic! If we were to then come to PE and stretch our muscles, they wouldn’t be happy if we were sitting still. Our bodies need to move to get blood flowing to bring oxygen to all of our body.  When we move our body dynamically (through running, hopping, skipping, jumping and galloping) we are warming up our bodies and muscles in a way that brings blood all over our body faster.  Static stretching (still stretching) is a way for us to increase our flexibility. Dynamic stretching (movement) is a way for us to increase our mobility. Think about the tin man greasing his joints, it’s almost the same. At the end of class, when we have time; I like us to slow down our heart rates, and bring our bodies back to being calm by doing static (still) stretching. I like to wait until after active activity because to help increase our flexibility it makes sense to make sure our bodies are warm before stretching our muscles.

This week I would like you to create your own warm up sequence. We have talked about sequences in our fitness and our gymnastics units. A sequence is an order of movements.  I would like you to make a sequence of warm up exercises that help your legs, your core, and your arms! This should take about 10-15 minutes to create. Once you have created your sequence I would like you to try to use your sequence before an active activity. I would also like you to try an activity activity WITHOUT your sequence beforehand. Do you feel a difference? Is your body sore or tight? Is your brain not working fast to connect with your body? Do you feel clumsy?

Here is the link to the exercise library, if you have exercises that aren’t listed here please use those as well!

Exercise Library 

Try it out!

Next week we have a special lesson dedicated for our sixth grade class, and in two weeks we are going to have a VIRTUAL FIELD DAY!!!!!!

Have an active and healthy week!

Coach Sadie

Week of May 11- May 17th

Hello LES!

This week I would like us to work with ‘striking implements.’ You might be thinking “uh Coach Sadie what on Earth are you talking about?!” I’m talking about ping pong paddles, tennis racquets, pickleball paddles,  racquet ball paddle, badminton racquets, pro kadima paddle, even using frisbee as paddles (what?!).  ‘What if I do not have an implement to strike with?’ You can use your hands! I will get into that part a little later but fear not!

Striking is the act of using an object (typically a racquet or paddle) to hit (manipulate) another object that (ball, birdie, balloon). This task can be difficult because you cross planes with your body meaning you step with your opposite foot, then swing or strike with the opposite upper body, and follow through across your stepped foot.  Sometimes we do the opposite of that and cross our body while stepping with the same foot too! This is a lot to remember!! This is really difficult because our bodies need to coordinate a whole lot of things to be able to do this.

THE GRIP

Let’s talk quickly about the grip. We want to take our dominant hand (the hand we feel most comfortable with, sometimes we use to write with) and place the object in our hand and hold it like we are holding a magic wand. We are not holding it like a pencil, or a marker. Our fingers should wrap around the object and our thumb will rest on the front or side of the handle.

The grips and stances for our two strokes look like this! The differences are where we hold our paddle, aside our body or across our body. Which one looks like we are reaching across our body?

Forehand                                             Backhand

Level 1

The bump up! This is when we take a racquet or paddle and a ball or balloon and try to bounce the ball on the paddle or racquet. This is kind of like juggling but with an object instead of your hands. All I want you to focus on is tapping the ball using what is called your forehand.

Your forehand is the side of your hand where your palm is, think about high fives with your forehand! If you were to use your back hand it would look silly and feel weird. SO we will practice bumping holding the paddle with our high fiving forehand facing up. Try to bump it 3 times in a row, then 5, then 10, then 20! See how many bumps you can do.

Animated GIF

 

Now we are going to bump backwards with out backhand. Our back hand is when we flip our hand over so that we are looking at the back of our hand as we bump the ball or balloon on our paddle.

Animated GIF

Which grip did we have more control with? Our forehand or backhand? How did we keep the ball in control? Did we hit the ball really hard? Did we hit the ball so soft it barely bounced? Did we keep the paddle really close to our body? Was the paddle so far away I had to move my whole body to follow the ball?

Try to tap the ball behind your back or between your legs! I tried but my house is a little too small for my movement. I will have to practice outside!

Animated GIFAnimated GIFAnimated GIF

Level II

Now once you feel more comfortable with this try to strike the object over a still object at waist level. Once you get this down try to strike the object so it goes over a still object and into a boundary! For example the still object is the imaginary net you are aiming to hit over and now you want it to land in a certain area. Once you have practiced this with your forehand, try to use your backhand! If you can try to hit the ball to a wall/rebounder and have it rebound back to you. Let it bounce once before you return (hit it back).

Animated GIF

I would make the table further and the cooler further but I live in a small house! Work with what you’ve got! This is way better played outside!

Level III

If you are really comfortable with all of the above, NOW you are going to use the overhand and underhand ideas we have talked about this year! When we did bump ups thats using the underhand method, our hand is under the ball and comes from under our waist. The overhand we will toss the ball over our head and our paddle and racquet will follow overhead making an overhand strike!

Here is a GIF of Venus and Serena William’s overhand serves! Incredible!

synchronized serena williams GIF by Australian Open

I don’t have a racquet or paddle….

That’s okay! As silly as it sounds you can use a frisbee as a hand paddle by holding it at the edge placing your thumb on top and your fingers underneath the edge. You can strike a ball with this still! If you have a plastic plate, tupperware lid, or paper plate and balloon all of these work as well! The final alternative is to use your hand! Volleyball is a GREAT example of a time you would use your hands to strike objects. We will talk about volleyball more next week and how to strike specifically for that. If you only have your hand options, keep your hands flat meaning not a fist, you can still strike smaller objects like a tennis ball, raquet ball, ping pong ball, balloon etc.

I hope you all get out and play! Continue to work on previous activities and challenges as practice will help you improve comfort and skill!

As always have a healthy and active week!

Coach Sadie

Week of May 4- May 10

Good morning everyone!

This week I wanted to try a game of BINGO with you all! I have placed 24 different activities on a bingo board below. Every time you participate in an activity for AT LEAST 10 minutes you can cross the box off! If you get 5 in a row you win a virtual high five! Five in a row can be diagonal, horizontal, or vertical lines! This is a great way to try new things and to switch up some of the routines we have created. Even if you do not know how to do an activity listed, I want you to try to practice the basics of it!

*Please note: for the climbing and Parkour/free running activities; please make safe choices. If you do not have a play structure, or rock wall, or small tree to climb you should try a different activity. Parkour and free running are a combination of slightly different movements of running, climbing and jumping from one point to another as quickly as possible. Please do not do extreme hardcore parkour- let’s be safe and creative- make your own course! *

CHALLENGE OF THE WEEK

It has been so hard for me to motivate myself to try new things recently. Motivation is the drive or want to do something. We sometimes feel motivated to play hard in games to win, or to beat our last score, or to achieve a goal we made. When we are stuck in quarantine doing the same things over and over it can be really hard to feel motivated. You aren’t alone! This week I would like to give you a few options to try at home to improve in areas that we touched upon this year in class.

Dribbling a ball with your hands

Level 1

Level 2

Dribbling a ball with your feet

Level 1

Level 2:

Level 3

 

See how many juggles you can get in a row! I’ll post my best score from this week in next week’s blog post! Stay tuned for some upcoming posts about striking using implements including bats, racquets and paddles!

Have a healthy and active week!

Coach Sadie

Week of April 27-May 3

Good afternoon everyone!

I am so excited for the upcoming weather, as they say April showers bring May flowers. I hope you are all able to get out and enjoy some of the sunshine and fresh air! This week I am going to be looking for a little bit more creativity from you all in your movement!

Active Activity

Preschool and Kindergarten

This week for my younger students Pk-K I would like you to work on pathways and traveling using objects you can find to help you! This might look like laying sticks in shapes of letters on the ground, or placing cones, or using chalk to make a pathway. Pathways we have learned are zig zag, straight lines, curved pathways and a combination! Please use different ways to travel like walking, galloping, skipping, hopping, and leaping. We also know that there are different directions we can travel!  Forward, backward, side to side, above, below, inside and outside! We also know there are different speeds we can travel, fast, slow, medium, we can also travel at different levels, high, low, medium. I would also like you to join the activity below!

Preschool-6th Grade

All  grades please begin with this game OUTDOORS! You will need parent permission to play indoors and you should invite all family members to play. This is a fun activity for all ages, it requires balance, agility, and a bit of listening. This game is called FLOOR IS LAVA.  The way the game works: you need to make rules for where the boundaries of your area of play is, you need to make sure to mention which items are off limits to use, and you need to make sure the objects you are playing with are safe. Once you have made these rules one person will say ‘the floor is lava!’ Once this is announced the person that called it will count down from 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and BOOM the floor becomes imaginary molten lava. You need to make sure you are not touching the ground with any body part by the time the counter gets to 1. You have to hold that position until the counter says the ground is safe. This cannot be longer than 5 full seconds.  If you touch the ground you’ve become lava. There isn’t winning or losing in the game however you should switch who gets to count and call ‘the floor is lava.’ The counter can participate if they would like but they don’t have to if they called it. You can make this game more challenging if you make the rule that people cannot share the same space.

Another variation is to challenge yourself to get from one side of the playing space to the other without touching the ground. Most grades did this challenge in P.E at the beginning of the year using all sorts of equipment! Since we are at home and don’t have the fun items from P.E we will have to improvise! Use items that would be safe!

Here is a video of the game being played with the first variation!

 

Challenge Activity

This week’s challenge was inspired by a 5th grade student who sent me a video of what he’s been up to! He has been playing ‘Dude Perfect Golf’ where each person is given a frisbee, basketball, soccer ball and a football. Then they start from far away from their basketball net and try to see how many times they can get their objects to land in the hoop by throwing or kicking. He sent me a video of himself kicking a soccer ball and scoring it in the basketball net from what looks like at least 20 feet away! So cool!

Your challenge this week is to try to make ‘trick shots.’ This means taking objects that can be thrown or kicked and try to get them to land in a chosen spot. Here are a couple examples below. You get to make things as challenging or as simple as possible.

I have also included the water bottle flip challenge because it is another simple item to challenge yourself to use. If you are into reusable bottles and don’t happen to have plastic bottles floating around, I have tried with my Nalgene and it works however it is louder and heavier, so I recommend going outside.  Make sure you are not flipping the bottle onto breakable objects.

 

Brain Break Activity

This week instead of giving you a calming activity I wanted to give you a tool for a brain break. I used 4 sticky notes to create a square on my living room floor. These 4 activities are quick ways you can recharge your body and brain by moving with intention.  Try to perform 15-30 seconds of each of these 4 activities in a row; you will get your heart pumping in only two minutes! Practice these motions slow, and then speed it up, the faster you can go while in control the harder these activities can be. This is a great challenge for your brain and body to do together! Try to create your own patterns too! OR you can try to use the agility ladder exercises we learned and stay in one square instead of traveling.

Hip Swivel Animated GIF

HOT FEET Animated GIF
4 Corner Ski  Animated GIF
UMLMRMBM(up, middle, left, middle, right, middle, bottom, middle)Animated GIF

 

Have an active and healthy week!

Coach Sadie

Week of April 20 to April 26

Good morning everyone!

This week is looking pretty gloomy, please try to get outside when you can, fresh air supports a fresh mindset!

Weekly Active Activity

Ladder workouts! Some of you may be thinking- Coach Sadie we did that last week… and you would be correct! This week however is a different type of ladder workout. This is for strength and endurance, last week we worked on agility and short, fast movements. Our exercises will be set into a progression MEANING we will begin with a small number and work our way up to the big number, and then back down to the small number. I will give you a workout for each day this week. Preschool to first grade your active activity will be below this portion! I did not forget you! You are more than welcome to try the grades 2-3 exercises as well!

Tuesday

We are going to do upper body and core exercises today. I have chosen Superman, Flutter Kicks, and Shoulder Dips.  Superman exercises and engages our core including our abdominal muscles and our lower back muscles. Flutter Kicks engage our lower abdominal muscles as well as our hip flexors. The Shoulder dips will engage our triceps which are on the back of our arms! Below will be a GIF of each exercise. If you are having a hard time viewing please make sure you are in google chrome, I find I have a hard time viewing in Safari.

Grades 2-3  Your ladder will be 3, 5, 7, 5, 3. This will look like 3 supermans, 3 flutter kicks, 3 tricep dips. Take a 1 minute rest. Now try 5 supermans, 5 flutter kicks, 5 tricep dips. Take a 1 minute rest. 7 supermans, 7 flutter kicks, 7 tricep dips. Take a 1 minute rest. Now work your way back down the ladder, 5 supermans, 5 flutter kicks, 5 tricep dips. 1 Minute rest. 3 supermans, 3 flutter kicks and 3 tricep dips. NOW YOU ARE DONE WOOO!

Grades 4-6  Your ladder will be  5, 7, 10, 7, 5 This will look like 5 supermans, 5 flutter kicks, 5 tricep dips. Take a 1 minute rest. Now try 7 supermans, 7 flutter kicks, 7 tricep dips. Take a 1 minute rest. 10 supermans, 10 flutter kicks, 10 tricep dips. Take a 1 minute rest. Now work your way back down the ladder, 7 supermans, 7 flutter kicks, 7 tricep dips. 1 Minute rest. 5 supermans, 5 flutter kicks and 5 tricep dips. NOW YOU ARE DONE WOOO!

Superman! Sometimes this is a holding exercise, I want you to lift your body up hold for one second, and drop, then repeat.

Animated GIF

Flutter kicks! Try not to lift your head, and try not to lay on your hands!

Animated GIF

Tricep Dips!

This first one is the beginner tricep dip, keep your knees bent and lift your body with your arms. Try not to sink your head into your shoulders, you got this!

Animated GIF

Version number 2 is a little more difficult, keep your legs straight out and remember to lift your body with your triceps and shoulders! Don’t lift with your legs, I believe in you!

Animated GIF

Wednesday!

Cardio ladder day! Today I would like you to grab a timer of some sort (watch, kitchen timer, ipad, iphone, android, clock). Now you will go OUTSIDE! You will set the timer for the following times:

Now high five yourself! You rock!

Thursday

Another exercise ladder! This time we are going to work on our lower body. We are going to do calf raises, side lunges and leg raises.

Grades 2-3  Your ladder will be 5, 10, 15, 10, 5 remember the one minute rest in between each level!

Grades 4-6 Your ladder will be 10, 15, 20, 15, 10 remember the one minute rest in between each level!

Calf Raises! These are simple you essentially go up on your tippy toes. If you have a stair you should put your heel near the edge of the stair, and dip lower than the edge. If you are like me and do not have that option in your home a simple calf raise will do! These work your calf muscles, did you know you have two calf muscles? They are called your gastrocnemius and soleus muscles.  This exercise is mostly felt in your gastrocnemius which is the bigger calf muscle.

Animated GIF

Side lunges! These are great for strength and flexibility, try to get low and lift yourself and switch to the other side without losing your balance! These are great for our hamstrings, quadriceps  and gluteus maximus muscles which make up  our thighs and our bottom.

Animated GIF

Leg raises are great for our hamstrings, and quadriceps but more importantly our gluteus minimus which is the smaller of our gluteus muscles. This muscle can be hard to exercise and this exercise seems silly but is great! This muscle is important because it strengthens our hips which is important for how we move and support our body!

Animated GIF

Friday

Today we will do another cardio ladder! This time we are going to do jumping jacks, squat jumps and mountain climbers! The only new exercise today is a squat jump and it looks like this:

Animated GIF

Grades 2-3 Your ladder will be 10, 14, 18, 14, 10 remember the one minute rest in between each level!

Grades 4-6  Your ladder will be 14, 18, 20, 18, 14 remember the one minute rest in between each level!

Again give yourself that HIGH FIVE!

Preschool, Kindergarten and First Grade!

Our ladder workout this week will look a little something like this:

Tuesday

Have a guardian time you for 5 seconds hopping on one foot, then 5 seconds hopping on the other. Now try to do 10 seconds hopping on one foot, now the other! Try to hop for 15 seconds on one foot, and the other!! This Is SO HARD but such a fun way to burn off some of our energy. We are also working on practicing these locomotor skills still as we grow with our bodies more!

Now let’s try to do 2 inch worms, take a break, now do 3 inch worms, take a break, now do 4 inch worms! This ladder will only be a build up because inchworms exercise our WHOLE body!

Animated GIF

Last one for today! Let’s try to do a crab walk for 3 crab steps, take a break, now 4 crab steps, take a break, now  5 crab steps! Again we are going to stop at the top of this ladder PHEW!

Animated GIF

Great work!

Wednesday

Today we are going to RUN! Have a guardian time you for

30 seconds running, 30 seconds walking, 45 seconds running, 45 seconds walking, 1 minute running, 1 minute walking, now lets try to work back down the ladder!! 45 seconds running, 45 seconds walking, 30 seconds running, 30 seconds walking. Phew! Done with that!

Thursday

Time for a skiing ladder! Don’t own any skis? No worries! I don’t either, in fact I’ve never gone downhill skiing! This ladder will mostly be jumping in different forms that remind me of skiing. Why do we jump so much? Jumping moves our body in a way that we transfer weight. What that means is our body has to learn how to balance when we land from a jump. This is a skill that we are developing and will help us with our balance and agility as we grow bigger! Today we are going to the pretend ski slopes and we are going to try to do another ladder! Try to take a one minute break between each exercise.

We will start with Moguls! Here we are going to try to jump from side to side! Imagine you are flying down hill on a pair of skis and you are bouncing from jump to jump. Lets begin with 10 Side to side jumps!

Animated GIF

Now we will head over to the Cross Country skiing area where we will begin with 10 big glides.

Animated GIF

Head back to moguls one more time for 20 more jumps side to side! Then ONE MORE ROUND of cross country glides! Lets do 20 front and back. Remember to propel yourself using opposite hands and legs! You can do it!!

Friday

We are going to RUN AGAIN! Have a guardian help you time yourself!

45 seconds running, 45 seconds walking, 1 Minute running, 1 minute walking, 1:15 minute running, 1:15 minute walking, now lets try to work back down the ladder!! 1 minute running, 1 minute walking, 45 seconds running, 45 seconds walking. Phew! Done with that! Great job!

Challenge of the week 

Juggling!  This week I thought it would be fun to work on variations of juggling.  See if you can find 3-4 like items around the house that would be safe to throw and catch. I recommend things like hacky sacks or stress balls. If you don’t have these items try balled up socks, clementines (if your guardians okay that…), tennis balls work but may be frustrating because they are light weight and bouncy.  Alternatively you can make them using rice, plastic bag, and balloons if you have those floating around your house!

Level 1

-Throw the ball in your dominant hand (the hand you feel stronger throwing with) and catch with the same hand

-Throw the ball in your dominant hand and catch in your NON Dominant hand.  If both of these feel comfortable it’s time to move on!

-Throw the ball up over your head and turn around and catch the ball with one hand.  Try to throw and catch using both hands! Keep practicing!

-Throw the ball up, and catch the ball between your legs using your dominant hand, then switch to practice the other.

Level 2

Level 3

Level 4

 

I would love to see how far you have progressed with this challenge! I am still working on juggling 3 balls! This is a great challenge when you need a break from work.

I hope you all have a healthy and active week!

Coach Sadie

April 13th-19th Continued

The PE challenge of the week is another one of my favorite games! This game is called Salad Bowl. I call it Salad Bowl because it is best played with a big bowl and usually the biggest bowl in the house is the Salad Bowl.

Things you will need: 

Paper

Writing Utensil

Open Mind; with a dab of creativity

An inventory of ALL items you could possibly play with

Game Play: On a piece of paper write down the objects in which you have that you can play with. For example the equipment that I have at home is VERY limited. I have -2 hockey pucks, 1 hacky sack, 1 soccer ball, 1 jump rope, 6 dice, 1 hockey stick, 1 balance board, 2 lacrosse sticks, 2 lacrosse balls and chalk. I will write down each of these items on their piece of paper. Now I place the papers into the salad bowl.

If you are playing with more than one person each person will take turns picking items out of the bowl. You will choose 3 items total to start. Here you will now have to make a game, or challenge with the three items.

I picked hockey puck, balance board, and lacrosse stick.  I am now going to create a game or challenge. The challenge is for me to balance on my balance board, place my hockey puck on the board, try to flick it up to myself and catch it with my lacrosse stick. I can add to this by switching sides and catch on my left, I can try to see how many catches I get in a row without the balance board touching the ground, I can challenge myself in a ton of ways!

Animated GIF

The games you create should have rules about safety, and using items in a way that will not be dangerous. I highly recommend doing ball games outdoors. The challenge is to really use items in a way that is different than intended while being safe and having fun. Make an obstacle course, try to juggle a ball of socks with your feet, use a frisbee as a catching tool on your head and try to catch objects you throw to yourself on your head! There are so many activities you can do with limited equipment, try to make something fun out of the things you have!

As you know games you all create I love to hear and build with! In Kindergarten we have a warm up game called Pine Tag that students created on the playground- it has grown to be a fun mirroring and matching game that we love to play. Have fun,  be creative and please share if you would like in the comments below!

Calming Activity of the week

Some of you may have noticed we began a sequence last week. This sequence is called Sun Salutations. I began the sequence last week and left it with the first bit because I find those few motions are great when I am really busy and just need to recollect myself. This week we will add the rest of the sequence so that we have a full Sun Salutation Sequence down. This week’s weather is looking more favorable for Yoga and calming activities so here we go!

Last week we left off with a Half Standing bend. Remember these should be slow movements holding 1-3 Mississippi’s between each movement.  Here we have a video of my best attempts, and a picture of what that all looks like if you need to see a visual of each movement.

Have a healthy and active week!

 

Coach Sadie

April 13th – 19th

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!

Animated GIF

 

Animated GIF

Animated GIF

Animated GIF

Animated GIF

Animated GIF

Animated GIF

Animated GIF

Animated GIF

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!

LES Get Moving Challenge

Good Morning LES Families!

I hope you all were able to enjoy the sunshine the past few days outdoors.  Nurse Leah and I are now introducing the ‘LES Get Moving Challenge.’ This is a school wide challenge by choice activity. It is optional and we hope you give it a chance! The challenge is to track how many minutes you are being active each day.  We would like to see how many of our students are getting at least 4 hours of active activity each week. Below you will find the link to the log. If you cannot edit the document or print it, need not fret just send us a note of which week it is, how many active minutes each day per student, and what activities they were doing.

Can’t wait to hear from you all! Have an active and healthy week!

LES Get Moving

Coach Sadie and Nurse Leah