KidActive

This week, we’ve been looking at glimpses of various ways that homeschooling families across Canada include physical education to their days. There have been some great photos of various sports teams, and creative ideas like trampolining, going for walks, and more. But, what ELSE can we do to get our kids (and ourselves!) moving.

Introducing Active For Life, a Canadian site that is aiming to help promote and encourage “physical literacy” for kids. What is physical literacy?

So, how can we, as homeschooling parents/teachers, encourage our kids to become physically literate? The Active for Life website has some great suggestions and ideas that are easy to implement, teach, and try.

There are several great blog posts:

• 10 easy ways you can add physical literacy to your kids’ daily routine
• Physical literacy checklists

• 10 ways to encourage your kids to love moving

And some fun lesson plans intended for daycare or summer camps that are more than easily adaptable to homeschoolers – especially if you participate in a gym program. (I’m going to be using these for my weeks as gym leader!) Although intended for the preschool/early years crowd – they are still skills needed for everyone.

These focus on basic skills needed for most sports and activites – like running, dodging, jumping, throwing, kicking, etc. They have broken them down into 5 one hour lessons with various games and teaching periods that make it easy to follow.

Physical literacy lesson plans for summer camps and daycares

Plus – they have a free web-based app called KidActive. You sign up your kids and log in. Then there are suggested exercises (with instructions), and you do them for whatever time is expected to do it for.

Then you report about your experience by choosing if your child has improved to be a “beginner, emerging, or advanced” skill level. A new activity starts then. There is a little pie chart at the bottom of the page with what skills you’ve been increasing. The next time you log in, it will suggest new activities based on what you’ve already accomplished. A fun way to get you and your kids moving.

This app is also available in French.

You can find Active for Life on Facebook and on Twitter too!