Preschool Fitness Makes Me Wanna Jump, Jump!

Yall. I am so outta shape.

This month we are studying Health and Fitness with our 

preschool curriculum from Mother Goose Time.

We had JUMP day on Wednesday.

Thursday morning my legs were so sore.

It took me a while to figure out why…. smh…

My calf muscles hurt from all the jumping I did with my preschoolers the day before.

Yall.  MGT wasn’t lying about their Fitness Week.

This week we had the opportunity to add one of Avaleigh’s best buds, Joseph,  to our homeschool for the day.  I wasn’t sure how he was going to react to us doing “school,” but he ended up taking his Frog Hat (activity described below) to his real preschool on Thursday, so I guess he loved it!  

Because I knew his rambunctious personality, I decided to skip a few lessons and do JUMP day to suit both his and Avaleigh’s needs.  They had so much fun!  

Here are our highlights:

Our day began with a question:

“Do you know any animals that can jump?”

The kids spouted out answers left and right: 

rabbits, kangaroos, grasshoppers, frogs, and even dolphins (thank you Octonauts).

We then did our Community Challenge Activity.  This is where I think I worked out the most…

After catching my breath and all of us sitting down, we revisited the animals that jump.

I told them that they were going to make Frog Headbands to wear today so that they could jump like frogs.  They were pretty stoked!

The directions had us using paint and plastic bags, which would have given us a really cool textured effect, but I decided to whip out our dot blotters.  I did not know how Joseph would handle paint, and my 1 year old was napping, so I went with a less risky paint application. I still think they turned out great!  MGT sent us the frog cut out, band, eyes, and tongue!  Avaleigh worked hard getting the tongue to wrap around her finger so it could be curly.

Are they not adorable?! 

Look at this little animation of them jumping with their frog headbands!

I laugh every time I watch it….lol… 

We took a quick break from jumping to read our suggested story of the day:

Good for Me and You (Little Critter book) by Mercer Mayer.

We also read From Head to Toe by Eric Carle and acted out the movements in the book.

They are arching their backs like a cat pictured below.

After our stories it was time to jump again.  You can tell why I was hurting on Thursday, can’t you?

This time we were jumping for letters.  Before we did the activity, I decided for them to practice building our monthly letters, Q, A, and G with our loose letter parts from MGT.

It took Joseph a little while to get used to it, but once he did, he was cranking out those letters.  I loved watching Avaleigh work alongside him.  She helped him here and there, but she was so happy to have someone working alongside her.  

“Does your mom teach you school too, Joseph?” she asked.

“No, I go to school on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” he replied.

Love their little conversations.

Back to the Jumping for Letters Activity…

We didn’t really jump up so much as jump to.

Those prepositional words make all the difference, huh?

I made them each little lily pads from green card stock that I taped to the floor.  After rolling the letter, they hopped to that letter on the wall.  Here’s a minute video of our game in action

(Avaleigh didn’t jump at the end of this video due to needing to go to the potty).

After this game, Everett woke up from his nap.

We took the jumping outside as I taught them how to play hopscotch.

The neighbor kid across the street joined in on the fun and helped the Joseph and Avaleigh create a hopping board game made from chalk.  The game is a long path of squares that twist and turn all over the driveway.  The person must roll a die and then hop that number of squares.  Some squares tell you to switch places, some have “lava” in them so you have to leap over the lava spots, and some even have carrots drawn in them because rabbits hop and like carrots. #brilliant 

None of the game was my idea, just all 3 kids.  I love seeing their imaginations work.

All I had to supply was the chalk and foam die. 

(thanks MGT for all those foam dice!)  

We were still hopping on that chalk board game tonight.

I might hurt tomorrow.  I’ll keep you posted! 

Happy Jumping!

**By the way, does my title to this post remind you of anything???** hahaha!