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My beautiful and wonderful friend Anna Ayers Looby sent me a link today that really got me thinking. Here's the link:

http://sspw.dpi.wi.gov/sspw_physicaled

Basically it gave me the flashing reminder that my students NEED PHYSICAL ACTIVITY in their daily lives. Everyone should have a total of 60 minutes of some sort of physical activity every single day. Since my students only get P.E. twice a week, most of them just want to eat their snack instead of run around at recess, and the rest of their 8 hour day is spent sitting....majority of those minutes depend on me. Now, when your school and state have a deathly fear of failing and standards, objectives, mastery, and test scores are at the core of everything you do, it's easy to forget about the importance of educating well-rounded children. If you'd asked me to add physical activity to my classroom during my first year of teaching, I probably would have started crying (ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME I CAN HARDLY GET ALL THE OTHER ISH THEY WANT ME TO DO DONE IN TIME WITHOUT COMPLETELY LOSING IT) but with a year under my belt, I'm ready to tackle these things that I value as a teacher, and so I started doing some research.

Here are some ideas I've found for quick little ways to add physical activity/brain breaks to your daily routine:

1. Step one, make one of these bad boys! What a fun way to decide how to take a quick brain break rather than coming up with something off the top of my head when I notice the kiddos getting a case of the wigglies! Plus, it gives them some autonomy, since I can let my student leader roll the cube.

2. Daily physical activity rule. So, the rule of the day might be that if you go to the bathroom, you have to do arm circles the whole way, or you have to walk backwards, or you have to do lunges, or something fun that makes monotonous routine activities a little more exciting.

3. Q and A Stretching. This is basically the same type of thing I do with whiteboard Q and A, only the kids are standing while they do it (brilliant, absolutely brilliant, WHY DIDN'T I DO THAT). Teacher gives multiple choice review questions, students stand at their desks, write their answer on a whiteboard, and then hold it up as high as possible to show the teacher (this is the stretch part!). 

4. Race In Place. Students will run in place at their desks. When the teacher gives a signal, they listen to the question and write their answer down as quickly as possible.
(source of 2-4 is yourtherapysource.com via pinterest)

The next few are some that I already use but I need to remember to implement and use more regularly throughout the daily routine:

5. Protractor (Angle stretch). Have students drop their hands down to their toes. Slowly, together, count up to ten as you raise your hands from the floor to the ceiling (by ten, your hands should be stretched way above your head). THEN, you have the students show you different angles based on where there arms would be during the ten count (for example, if the teacher says the number three, the students should stretch down to where their arms would be at number three---close to the floor, but not all the way to zero at their toes).

6. Body Shake. Students start with their right hand up in the air and shake it, counting down from 8. Repeat with left arm, right leg, left leg. Repeat this counting down from 7, then 6, then 5, then 4, then 3, then 2, then one last big whole body shake for 1.

And some more I found from pinterest that I liked:

7. My Day So Far. Students have thirty seconds to act out everything they've done that day, starting with waking up, getting dressed, etc.

8. Walk This Way. Students walk each way for ten seconds (baby steps, giant steps, limping, bunny hopping, backwards, tip toes).

9. Air Band. Play a song for a minute or two and have students pick their air instrument and rock out until the music stops.

10. Choose an exercise from the cube. 20 jumping jacks, 20 hops, run in place for 30 seconds, etc.

So basically the plan would be to implement enough of these little brain breaks throughout the day so that with recess and PE, my students are getting their daily 60.

#daily60
#gitfit

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