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of resources I want to create to help in teaching my content in Health & Fitness because much of the information is outdated, uninspiring, OR it's just not there!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

Fall is here!

Can't believe it's already the end of October.  Tomorrow is Halloween and then it's onto a new month.  

November means holidays are JUST around the corner! 

Ugh! 

Bring on the rush. 

The busyness.  

The craziness of weekends and counting down until Christmas.  

Christmas!

Okay.

Let's pump the brakes a little bit. 

Before I flip the calendar into November, let me take a moment to reflect on these past two months. Starting another school year and all the resources I've been working on, while trying to FIND MY BALANCE along the way.

Okay, here goes! 

End of August... I started by COMPLETELY clearing out and reorganizing my PE office.  Literally pulled EV-ER-Y-THING out of the office and onto the gym floor.

Yes. 

It was A LOT!  

Right?

A LOT! 

I couldn't just rearrange all the equipment and make sense of ALL the stuff until it was OUT and I had a clean slate to work with. 

It was A LOT of work, but work and sweat well spent!  I'm so glad I bit the bullet so to speak and just rolled up my sleeves and got to work. 

Now I know EXACTLY what equipment I have, and where it is.  As I've been teaching for a couple months now, I can honestly say that it makes my heart super happy and content walking into my space and seeing it all organized.  Plus it helps save me SO MUCH TIME when planning my lessons and getting supplies organized. 

It looks like this now:

Doesn't that just give you a sense of... calm?  

Like take a breath. 

Ahhhhh.

As weird as it sounds, when things get crazy at school or behaviors with students start to bubble, I CLEAN.

I start to organize and clean.

Therefore, starting the school year with a clean slate helps me to find balance. 

Currently I'm working to organize and label these shelves.  I just printed the last of the labels I need and will put them on tomorrow when I'm back to work. 

As I cleared the gym of ALL the equipment it was then time to update the WALLS!  I had already cleared all the old posters and banners at the end of the school year in June.  

Again. 

Blank slate.

Being in the classroom I've learned that the more things I hang and have plastered on the wall, simply become camouflage over time.  

Knowing that, I wanted to go with LESS IS MORE in the gym space, and BIGGER is BETTER!

So I started to create big blocks of space that would be used for bulletin boards of information.  I wanted to incorporate some of the resources I'd been creating for TpT and that I thought I'd need for the school year. 

Remember, this is my FIRST year  being at ONE school and teaching ALL grade levels!  I knew I was going to be doing a little bit of 'building the plane while I fly'! 

It's still a work in progress, but I get that happy heart feeling each day I walk into my gym and I LOVE IT! 

Two months in, and I STILL find myself feeling happy when I walk in AND leave the gym each day. 

I really am blessed to be back at my 'home' school teaching PE!  Cheers to Year 14 being a fresh start and the beginning of my Health & Fitness journey! 

Phew!

Thanks for continuing this far... it was a lot.

More to come in another post!  I've been working on my PE resources for TpT and want to be able to share with others! 

As always, remember to FIND YOUR BALANCE friends,

Shelby