Gross Motor Planning – Fitness Week

Gross Motor Planning – Fitness Week

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It’s always fun to start fitness week off with a movement chart. (These are a free printable too!) This adds a little fun and accountability for the kids to track their fitness.  It’s a really great time to work on basic gross motor movements such as jumping, single foot balance, squats, lunges etc… Pink Oatmeal has an awesome set of cards and printables that go perfect with this theme!

Custom Cards and Printables For Kids

Pink Oatmeal also has a huge collection of custom designed cards and printables for kids that include upper extremity, lower extremity, core strength, balance, bilateral coordination, jumping, and more. All of these cards and printables were designed with feedback from Pink Oatmeal readers, members, and customers on what they wanted and needed in activity cards! These are also all top sellers in the shop for a reason!

SEE THE EXERCISE TASK CARD COLLECTIONS FROM PINK OATMEAL

 

Marathons – At School, Therapy, or Home

Another perfect activity for fitness weeks is starting to work on your marathon (or half marathon, 10k, 5k, mile etc).  This is a simple idea of tracking how far you walk as a class, during therapy, during PE etc.  It’s motivational as you have a goal to reach.  As a physical therapist I used this concept and with certain students would walk at the start of a therapy session and then mark off how far we would go.  I think it would be awesome if an entire group or class could do this!   At the end it’s fun to give out some kind of reward to go along with this.

Strength and Balance Exercises

Maybe you are looking for more creative ways to encourage strength and balance.  Pink Oatmeal is all about creative activities that encourage strength and balance.  Take a look at all of the videos and activities to make your exercises more creative! 

There are TONS OF VIDEO ideas in the following posts.  These are a great resource for so many ideas to use during fitness week and all year long!   

Pediatric Core Strengthening Ideas

Balance Exercises For Kids

Creative Upper Body Exercises For Kids

Ball Activities For Kids

Bilateral Coordination Activities

Fitness Circuits

Fitness week is a perfect time to set up fitness stations.   Read all about how simple these are to set up in the fitness stations post. 

Fitness Circuits are another great way to incorporate fitness. These can be implemented as a station in your classroom, therapy room, or home.  They are a great option for physical education or indoor recess as well!  I go through them once and let the kids move through them on their own.  Using a timer for each station is great or setting the number of repetitions.  This can be done with one kid up to a large group of kids!  

I really like that these can be done with a wide range of ages from early elementary all the way up to high school. 

This video goes through the circuits only doing one at a time.  I would likely do at least a few reps at each station.  The video was done this way so you could get a feel of what the fitness circuits look like. 

 

 

Winter Sports Circuits

Since it is the middle of winter and we are discussing a fitness theme, winter sports circuits seem very appropriate to fit this theme.  Set them up around the room and have the kids get their workout in.  The video shows a few different circuits.  My son is moving through the circuits fast, so we can show you what they look like.  I would recommend spending a little more time at each station!  Get your Winter Sports Fitness Stations here. 

 

 

 

Fitness Games

Fitness week is also the perfect time to play Fitness Bingo!  An absolute favorite of my kids and one of the top sellers in the Pink Oatmeal shop.  Your kids will LOVE this.  I get feedback on this game all the time about how much fun the kids using this are having! 

Yoga Bingo is another absolute hit!  Kids and adults love this game!  It can be found in the Yoga Games Pack along with other great yoga games to incorporate with your fitness theme or any time of the year.  

 

Playing the Win It In A Minute gross motor style game is perfect during this week.  Believe me, you work on your fitness when you have to perform these activities for an entire minute!

Themes

If a good theme is your thing, you can make this part of your fitness week.  A favorite themed fitness activity is construction themed fitness!  These adorable signs can be put up anywhere to work on fitness skills!  If this isn’t the theme that you are looking for, Pink Oatmeal has you covered.  Check out all of the different motor planning theme ideas.

 

 

 

Fitness Awards

At the end of fitness week give out awesome fitness awards!  These are available in the freebie library!

More Fun And Simple Games and Ideas Great For Fitness Week

YouTube Channels That Promote Brain Breaks – I love the idea of stepping away from the screen, but in a pinch these work great.

PowerPoint Games That Promote Fitness – So many fun FREE games here that the kids can interact with on a computer, iPad, or interactive white board.  Anywhere you have PowerPoint you can play these games.

Free Fitness Dice are a fun way to get little bodies moving.

Get All Things Fitness

SEE ALL OF PINK OATMEAL’S FITNESS RESOURCES

Don’t miss out on your chance to get so many great things for Fitness Week with some amazing bonuses included only in the Fitness Bundle.  You can click on the NAME link of the product below to get a full detailed description of each product or click the link above to see the huge selection of fitness resources.