Fun NEW Wellness Bulletin Board

Wow, I made it back after just a few weeks!  What an improvement! Ha ha!

I've really taken time this summer to create and it feels great!  Last post I mentioned wanting to tackle the list of ideas that I had for new resources to use in the gym... so here I am again with another resource.

I have to admit it was a bit prompted by the fact that I'm also in the process of starting my National Boards Certification again. Ugh!  My certification is up for renewal this year but since I've switched out of the classroom and my original certificated area was ELA I figured I might as well bite the bullet and make the transition into certifying in Physical Education.  I'm SUPER excited, but also completely overwhelmed and very anxious because it's no easy task.  It's going to be quite the year... but once it's done it'll be just as rewarding as last time.

Anyways, with that being said, this new resource I created will help to make the shift from the previous focus of physical education: Learning skills and sports concepts.  Not anymore.  Well, it's not the main focus.  We need to develop more physically literate students that are ready for lifetime fitness.  Therefore a focus on overall wellness is more important.  Hooray!  It's about time!  I mean c'mon, it's such a small percentage of students that even continue into sports, especially at any type of competitive level.  Instead students need to learn why it's important to make healthy choices, both eating and towards activity.  THAT will help them to be their HEALTHIEST self!

Insert perfect resource to help teach and review this exact idea here!

So I did. Unfortunately there's not a lot out there yet, so of course I had to create it.

Introducing my colorful, fun, and eye-catching bulletin board kit with Activity Sheets:

CLICK HERE for Link to TpT Resource

I enjoyed creating some 'kid-friendly' pictures to help introduce the idea of overall wellness and the benefits of fitness.  I can't wait to create another new bulletin board in my gym when I go back in August!  Here's a little more details of what's included:

I look forward to using the Activity Sheets as a pre/post test when assessing my students' understanding.  I'm hoping I might even be able to incorporate the lessons into my National Boards work since one of the components is all about assessment!  Two birds with one stone right?

Hoping someone might find it useful too! 

As always, continue to Find Your Balance friends! 

Shelby 

Summer Break is underway

I think of summer break in weekends.  

I have 10 weekends without setting an alarm Sunday night to get ready for another work week.  

Well, we're down to 7 weekends left.  I know that seems like summer has barely started, so let me clarify.  Three of these weekends are already planned, out of town for one and a little road trip for two of the others.  

Anyways, that means ONLY 4 WEEKENDS left of summer!  

I know, I know.  I'll slow down. I should be lucky that I get 10 weeks off in the first place, right?  Not going down that rabbit hole... instead, I'll look back on how summer has been going.

Soaking up the sunshine!

That's a typical 'Lake Life' weekend for me plus a lot of pickle ball too.  No pictures to show for that though. Too busy playing.  I love being able to move in so many ways over the weekend.  I recently, well, back in October, turned 40 so I appreciate that I CAN still move in these ways that I enjoy.  I look forward to many more years of movement too, and that's why switching into teaching Health & Fitness instead of just the classroom is so much more meaningful for me.  

I want to be able to share as much information about making choices to help enjoy the healthiest life you can is so important to me!  Which is why when I hear I only have 4 weekends left, it puts me in a panic.  I need the time to create!  I have a list of resources I want to create to help in teaching my content in Health & Fitness because much of the information is outdated, uninspiring, OR it's just not there!  

This week I was able to finalize my resource for teaching Essential Nutrients and I LOVE how it turned out!  I can't wait to create a new bulletin in the gym in August when I go back to school.  

Here's a peek into what's included in the resource:

CLICK HERE for Link to TpT Resource

This is just an example of what a bulletin board could look like with the resources included, but I'll try to replace it with an actual photo when I create my own in the gym. 

Cute right?

I'm looking forward to using these teaching posters when I start teaching our Nutrition Unit.  This last year I had some of the BEST questions asked by students when we talked about nutrients, but I didn't have any visuals to help support the information I was explaining.  So I'm SUPER excited to be able to have these to use when explaining each essential nutrient.  

Each poster has some simple information with food examples to help students understand food choices they can make to help them meet the needs of this nutrient.  Here's an example of the Proteins poster:

Again, cute right?  

I mean c'mon, look at that package of tofu!  It took what felt like FOR-EV-ER to create, but I'm glad I stuck with it because it finally turned out in the end.  

Notice how many plant based proteins there are compared to animal based... haha!  Sorry, I might have a bit of a bias there.  

#sorrynotsorry

For me, it's been a little over 2 years eating a plant-based (vegan) diet, so it's been interesting as I teach nutrition and being able to cover all the information that students SHOULD be able to know, but also being able to plant the seed of information that's often hidden and kept in the dark.  I don't think it's fair that the nutrition standards are very OUTDATED and funded by "agencies" that keep this unhealthy lifestyle circling year after year.  But THAT could be a whole post on it's own, so let's get back to the point of this point which is creating these NEW resources!

As I mentioned before, there's not a lot of inspiring resources to use when teaching nutrition in Health & Fitness so I created this next resource as a simple way to reinforce the food groups and the My Plate diagram. 

There's not much to it, but I didn't have something like it already so this is what I created:

CLICK HERE for Link to TpT Resource

Every My Plate diagram that I have already has the food groups labeled.  I didn't have a resource that allowed students to be able to place the pieces on the diagram.  I'm looking forward to being able to use the resource with different activities in the gym.  For example, a simple relay race where students have to run down and pick up a food group piece and then bring it back and place it on the My Plate diagram.  You can incorporate this with basketball, soccer, basic locomotor movements as a second layer of content. 

Actually, as I type this I'm thinking I need to already revise this resource to include pieces WITHOUT the food group label to allow another layer of understanding.  Can students associate the correct food group and color?   

So, I guess with that, I'm going to wrap this up so I can get to making that change and add it to the resource!  I'm also going to use this momentum to get started with my next project.  Summer starts to get away quickly, so hopefully it won't be so long until my next post. 

In the meantime, stay active and eating healthy. Do what makes your body feel good!  And as always, continue to Find Your Balance friends! 

Shelby 

 

Warm-Up Poster

Continuing from my previous post... here's my 2nd resource I finished over Winter Break.  I've been using this resource since the beginning of the year to help create a predictable warm-up structure for my students in the gym.  I wanted to have a way to quickly warm-up and stretch with a few exercises as well... and be EASY for students to follow.  Therefore I needed a poster with pictures!   I looked online for resources already available, and there wasn't much out there.  I'm noticing that happens A LOT with resources for the gym. 

There's just NOT much out there.  And if there is, the font and pictures aren't what I'm looking for in my gym.  Just like in the classroom... that means I have to MAKE SOMETHING MYSELF! 

Mission accepted. Ha ha! 

First off I started by drawing out the different stretches and exercises so I could have a realistic picture for students to use when following along.  Of course I stretch and exercise along side them, but sometimes I monitor effort by walking around and this allows students to still have a visual to follow along.  It also helps my students to see what's expected and minimizes the number of questions about what we're doing. 

So, what's the resource? 

PE Warm-UP Poster with Stretches & Exercise Cards

This resource includes pieces to create your own warm-up poster.  I like to use large chart paper on my easel that sits at the front of my gym.  I arrange the pieces and switch them out as often as I need to. I love how simple the pieces are to use.  I've also included some ready-to-print posters in case you need to just get started with something! 

Realistic pictures help students to see what the stretch and exercise looks like.  Personally I don't like all the cartoon-like clip-art choices that are out there. But that's just me.  I figure they see enough 'cartoon-ish' characters in their books and on TV, so in the gym I'd like it to be realistic.  Plus it'll help when we need to talk about topics like the skeletal or muscular systems.  I plan to use these pictures to help make connections.  (Of course I haven't worked on those resources yet, but they're to come!)

As of now, these are the stretches & exercises included for the warm-up poster:

I'm hoping to add more as I continue to see what we need, and of course I'll update the resource as I do!  But for now, that's it!  I hope you find it as useful as I have and enjoyable for your students.  

I love to see their excitement when I switch out an exercise to something new.  Who knew Tricep Dips could be so much fun?  That's one of the most recent ones I switched after coming back from our Winter Break.  Students were so excited to get into the crab position and learn this exercise.  Of course I squeezed in a little information about our tricep muscle which they were EVEN MORE excited about when I had them feel their own arm, bicep first.  They were so amazed to feel their own muscle moving as they made a fist and did a bicep curl!  They're such little sponges!  Soaking up ALL this learning about their body. I LOVE IT!  

It's moments like these that I know I'm in the right spot!  I enjoyed teaching in the classroom... but this is like 100 times more enjoyable for me!  Getting to demonstrate exercises and share my love of movement with students makes my heart happy.  It's like getting paid to play!  Ha  ha!  

I'm going to wrap it up here, and hope you find success with this warm-up poster resource in your own gym!   It helps to cut down on behaviors and gives students an opportunity for independence.  Did I mention it's SUPER HELPFUL when you have a guest teacher as well?  Easy to follow along or use student leaders to go through the already learned process of warm-ups! 

Let's continue to ignite that spark for movement and enjoying being able to move!  

Don't forget to check it out here:

 Warm-up Poster with Stretches & Exercise Cards

As always, continue to Find Your Balance friends!

Shelby

Roll & Exercise Activity

Thanks to our recent Winter Break I had some extra time to work on finalizing 2 new resources for TpT!  I've been using them in the gym since the beginning of the school year, but I finally finished putting them together to post on TpT.

So what are they?

Glad you asked...

First up, Roll & Exercise Activity! 

Click Here for link to resource:  Roll & Exercise Activity

This is such a SIMPLE way to get my students moving, and having some fun too! Who knew doing simple exercises could be so engaging?

I use this activity a couple ways.  It can be an easy relay activity using just a few pieces of equipment, or it works great at a station too! Start by creating the Roll & Exercise poster using the TpT resource posted above.

Relay Race Instructions:

Equipment:  Roll & Exercise Poster, cones, hula hoops, & dice

Instructions:  Arrange cones on one end of the gym to create the starting line for your relay teams.  On the opposite end of the gym place a hula hoop with one dice inside.  Hang the Roll & Exercise poster on this end so everyone can see.  I like to color coordinate the cones and hula hoops to help students see the different teams. 

Playing the activity:  One at a time students run down to the hula hoop and roll the dice.  Use the Roll & Exercise poster to see which exercise to complete.  Students complete a certain amount of the exercise they rolled.  For example, in the poster above #4 is Jumping Jacks.  If I rolled a #4 then I would complete five Jumping Jacks before running back to my team and the next student takes a turn.  Continue playing until you call time.  

GREAT activity to increase muscular strength and endurance too!  Kids think they're just playing a fun game, while you know they're getting great exercise as well.  WIN, WIN! 

It's also a quick and easy activity to use when you're short on time or need a lesson last minute for a guest teacher!  As teachers, there's going to be days when we need an activity that we know is simple and easy to use at a moment's notice, so this is PERFECT for that!  

Here's another way I use this Roll & Exercise activity.

Roll & Exercise Stations 

Equipment:  Roll & Exercise Poster (large or small), dice, & a cone (if using the Small Roll & Exercise Poster in a clear sleeve)

Instructions:  Set up various stations in your gym, with one area for Roll & Exercise.  Hang the Large Roll & Exercise poster somewhere in this area or use the Small Roll & Exercise Poster(s) included in this resource that can easily hang on a small cone.  Set out some dice next to the cone.  That's it!

Playing the activity:  Run stations as you do in your gym, when students arrive at the Roll & Exercise station they simply take turns rolling the dice and completing the exercise.  Decide on a certain number of reps for students to complete.  Continue rolling the dice and completing exercises until it's time to rotate to the next station.  **I like to add step boxes at this station to give them a little break between each Roll & Exercise.  Students complete 10 step box steps before rolling the dice again.  Talk about getting your steps in during class!

Super simple right?  My students have a blast with such an easy, minimal equipment needed or teaching beforehand.  Stations always work great with a guest teacher too!  

These are the different exercises included in this resource:

Simple exercises that can be modified if needed to meet your students' needs!  Here's what one of the ready-to-print Small Roll & Exercise posters includes:

Are you ready to include this resource in your gym?  Check it out and let me know how it works! 

Click here:

Roll & Exercise Activity

Need a resource to help structure your warm-ups in the gym?  That's up next!  Check out my next post on creating a fun and predictable warm-up that will help get your students get ready for any activity you have planned.  This warm-up works a bit on their cardio, flexibility, muscular strength, AND muscular endurance!  All components of fitness at once. WIN, WIN! 

Find your balance,

Shelby