Virtual physical education activities seem to be the hot topic for the online school teachers right now. I have been seeing a lot of questions or resources for how to teach the younger kids remotely.
Personally, I am loving it. I feel like I am able to get more cross curricular content into my students PE class without them even realizing.
Remote learning doesn’t have to be this overly hard task given to teachers to navigate alone. There are SO many resources out there. USE THEM! You might have to stray from your normal curriculm and that’s okay! It’s not normal school! Adapt to your environment and make the best out of the circumstances you’re in.
For me personally, I feel like I am killing the virtual teaching game. I have a great system down, and use the resources other people have worked so hard to create in order make OUR teaching lives easier.
I will be honest…I love virtual teaching, but it’s not for everyone. And from the looks of teacher Facebook groups, I feel like I am the odd man out because I don’t have much to complain about. And I am very thankful for that.
But maybe you’re in the boat where you could use a little bit of help…
Well I’m Here To Help Make Your Virtual Physical Education Class So Much Easier!
More resources:
What and Who Do I Teach?
I am currently in a K-8 school with three separate classes per grade level. Normally I would teach 23 DIFFERENT classes a week, and 45 classes total per week, but luckily for virtual physical education and the other specials my school made some changes to the schedule.
What it now looks like is I teach 9 different classes a week, but only once. Once the trimester ends, my 9 classes move on to Art or Technology and I will gain one of their 9 classes. It makes it so much easier on the kids and parents at home. This way they don’t have to constantly remember what special they have each day. My kids will see me on Google Meet or go into my Google Classroom every day for 12 weeks with no confusion.
For a deeper look into my day to day, you can check out my Teaching Update post here!
Virtual Physical Education Activities for Kindergarten:
Kindergarten is my favorite class to teach right now. There are so many virtual activities you can do for physical education in this grade.
Let me walk you through how I have set K up, and what we do weekly.
Google Classroom for Kindergarten
Since I only go live on Google Meet with K-2 on Mondays, that means I only see Kindergarten once a week. But as a PE teacher, we know we want our kids to be moving every day. So I set my Google classroom up two different ways.
Some weeks I will post an exercise video for the students every day. This allows the students or parents to enter my Google Classroom, and complete the exercise on screen during their virtual PE time. Each post is scheduled to show up the day they are to complete it, that way they wont be confused. Once they pop up for the students, they stay there. This is great, because if there are any activities the students liked they can revisit them at any time during the week.
If I am not posting workout videos, I am posting a PE Schedule that is always labeled Physical Activity Assignments. Students and parents know they will see a PDF with weekly workouts. This is a simple idea for you, but you also have to take into consideration who is reading the work.
Sometimes the videos are easier for the families. The parents can just pull it up and the kids follow along. With the PDF, the parents have to explain what their child should be doing. And we know that isn’t always possible due to working conditions. The plus side of the PDF though is that you can be more specific with activities (you will see in my 3-5 physical education virtual activities).
Grading For Kindergarten
My thought process for the little ones is to make it as user and kid friendly as possible. You have to be mindful that some K students are coming to school for the first time learning their letters. There’s a 99% chance they won’t be writing reflections or responses to your questions.
Do we want to check for understanding? Absolutely. But remember your kindergarteners don’t even know how to use a computer. Let alone produce work to be graded for you.
Below is a picture of what my K-2 students will complete to receive a participation grade. Every week only once, the kids or parents will open a Google Form document and submit their answer. It let’s me know they are on track with each week, and can navigate through my Google Classroom.
The below image shows the one question needed to be answered. I use emojis that relate to the words, in hopes that the students will associate the two together. If it is repetitive enough, the younger students will be able to start to complete this form on their own.
Not every student is going to complete this form. But Google Classroom makes it easy to keep track of who does and doesn’t. If I notice a student misses a week or two, I keep a closer eye on them in our Google Meet PE and give them their participation points that way. No student should fail PE in kindergarten…especially when it’s virtual.
Live Google Meet Physical Education Virtual Activities for Kindergarten:
This is the best part of virtual teaching. I get to see my babies for 30 minutes! And if you’ve made it through my post so far this is probably the main section you were looking for. Now what in the world should you be doing with your students?!
Since I have a really great flow, I am happy to share what I do. I will also be posting more in depth virtual physical activities for PE in a later post. So stay tuned.
Anyways…
Kindergarten live PE class is very structured shown below:
- Warm up
- Stretching/Counting
- Jumping Jack Clap
- Letter Movement Video
- Jumping Jack Clap + 2
- Alphabet Exercises
- Breathing Cool Down
K Warm ups
Every class we start off with a warm up. They are normally no longer than 5 minutes long. Instead of telling kids to just do the boring jumping jacks and push ups, I share my screen and play a movement video.
When we first started I would play videos with locomotor movements in them so the students could practice. Two of my favorites are:
But once the students started to get more comfortable, I started sharing videos they could interact with on a playful level. I discovered PE Bowman on YouTube and tried out his video called Balloon Pop Workout. I had saw a lot of PE teachers talking about this video online and through I’d give it a try.
It was SO MUCH FUN! Not only for the kids, but for me! If you’ve read my previous posts, I talk about how I always do the activities with the kids.
For more content check out PE Bowman on YouTube for his other extremely fun videos. I’m a huge fan of his Level Up 1-3 videos.
Stretching/Counting
No matter what we do on our Google Meet session, stretching is a MUST. I always talk about why stretching and flexibility is important in our lives.
I do about 10 different stretches with my kids and tell them what part of the body they are stretching. I will use specific terms such as hamstrings or quads, but always follow it up with front or back of the leg to help with understanding.
This is also our time to practice our counting. Each stretch I call on a different student to count to 10 or 20. Lately we have been counting backwards, or skip counting to 100 by 10’s. Today we counted to 100, but each student that was called on only got to count ten numbers at a time. So student A counted 1-10, student B counted 11-20, student C counted 21-30 etc.
Jumping Jack Clap
This was started in week two with the kids. Every week we learn new letters (next section), and do a jumping jack clap to reiterate what we learned.
We simply review all of the letters we’ve moved by doing jumping jacks and saying the letter at the clap when our hands touch. Today my students reviewed A-L so we did 12 jumping jack claps (JJC). You will see after today they learned M, N and O and we were able to add 3 more letters to our JJC.
Jumping Jack Clap
Here we practiced A-H, completing 8 jumping jacks.
This video is our second JJC of the class where we add the letters learned that day to the first JJC we completed.
But the set up is still the same.
Letter Movement Videos
Every class we learn 2 letters to move and dance to. This is just added practice onto what their classroom teacher does, so we start from A and move towards Z at our own pace.
The videos I always share are from the YouTube subscription Have Fun Teaching. They have so many educational videos for younger grades, and I would highly recommend checking them out.
Two videos we stared the year off with were:
While these are playing we dance. I will usually do some squats during the parts where the song sounds the letter out and I’ll notice some kids copying me. But I don’t make copying me a rule. Watching the kids be creative in their own movements is great to see.
Once both of the letter songs are over, I will make them find me something in their house that starts with the letter we learned. I give them 30 seconds to find something. Since we don’t have a lot of time, I don’t let them share. I usually just announce their different items and tell them what a great job they did.
Jumping Jack Clap + 2
Like the above section where we clap through the letters we learn, this is the part of the Google Meet where we add our daily letters to our JJC.
Last week Kindergarten finished on letter L. So today we reviewed, and then we learned about letters M, N and O.
I tell the kids from letters A-L is 12 jumping jacks. Then I ask if they can add MNO or 3 letters to that. A few kids raised their hand to answer this math problem and the first kid I called on got it right!
Alphabet Exercises
Since we are in PE, we have to be moving right? I feel confident that my kids and I spend at least 25 minute or more of our 30 minute class moving.
The last part of our class we spend associating our letters learned with exercises or stretches.
Every class we perform all of the letters learned that day, as well as the previous letters from past weeks. Each exercise or stretch is held for 10 seconds. If you are short for time, count faster or just do a couple reps each exercise. Either way the kids love this part of the class and are able to tell me what exercises go with each letter now due to the repetition.
Cool Down Breathing
Class always ends with five deep breaths in and out to get the kids ready for their classroom teacher.
This video called Cool Down Breathing Exercises is a visual of what we do, but I lead the class instead of sharing my screen for a video.
Once this is over, I give my kids a backwards ten second countdown to leave the Google Meet and tell them I can’t wait to see them next week!
And remember they have activities to do in their Google Classroom the rest of the week, so they will still be getting movement.
Virtual Activities for First Grade:
Lucky for you my K-2 Google Classroom is set up where the activities I provide on non Google Meet PE days are the exact same, so you won’t have to read through my 1st and 2nd grade GC setup.
We’ll get right into the physical education virtual activities for 1st grade on Google Meet every week.
First grade virtual activities for live PE is structured as follows:
- Warm Up
- Stretching/Flexibility: Skip Counting
- Sight Word Spelling Exercises
- Cross Curricular Content OR Free Activity
- Cool Down Breathing
As you can see it’s pretty similar to Kindergarten, but more age appropriate for first grade.
Warm Up
A lot of the workouts provided from PE Bowman’s YouTube channel are great warm ups for first grade, but another favorite I use is Mike Morris.
He does all of his videos at home so the students can relate to him. I try to use the videos without equipment, so the students don’t have to go looking for items in their house they may not have.
Stretching/Flexibility: SKip Counting
Just like with Kindergarten, I stress the importance of stretching our muscles. The difference between K and 1st is that we do more skip counting. Currently we are counting to 100 by 10’s.
I share the chart below with the kids to follow along with or to use as a guide to help if they need, and call on kids individually to do our stretch skip counting for us.
Sight Word SPelling Exercise
Maybe I should have specified that it’s not always a sight word activity during this part of our Google Meet session. But recently it has been.
Also, you will start to notice I do a ton of cross curricular activities. Of course my PE content is important, but since virtual school has thrown everyone for a loop, I am able to sneak more grade level content into our live PE sessions WHILE still incorporating my content.
We may not be learning how to play a five on five game of basketball, but we are learning body parts and muscles while spelling words and having fun.
I text with the first grade classroom teacher and ask what lesson she wants her students to get more practice with. In the beginning of virtual school we did verb practice, or letter sounds combined with physical activity.
Currently I am spending about 5 minutes showing kids on screen the sight words they have covered in their classroom already. I will call on a student to have them read the word out loud and then spell it. After they spell the word we use our alphabet exercise chart to perform each exercise/stretch for ten seconds per letter in the word.
First Grade Content OR Free Activities
With about 5-8 minutes left of our PE class, I will either throw in a little more 1st grade content into our lesson combined with virtual physical activities, or I will play a fun activity for the kids to enjoy.
Some of the fun virtual physical activities I like to share are:
- Line Jump Workout For Kids
- Animal Dance and Freeze
- Cosmic Kids Yoga (I only play a few minutes of it)
The best part about YouTube is when you select a video according to what you searched for, it recommends similar videos to play next. You could get sucked down a rabbit hole finding relatable content!
Cool Down Breathing
Just like K, we cool down with some deep breaths. If you map out these 30 minute workouts, you realize that you are moving the majority of the time and the kids heart rates can stay high.
While we take our deep breaths, I inform the kids that the exercise they did made them stronger, healthier and smarter. And now our deep breaths are clearing our minds, and helping us get ready for their classroom teacher again.
Virtual Activities for Second Grade:
Again, 2nd grade Google Classroom is the same as K and 1st, so I will jump ahead to our Google Meet live PE sessions.
Their structure is identical to 1st grade, only their classroom content differs.
For second grade, their virtual physical education activities are laid out as follows:
- Warm Up
- Stretching/Flexibility: Skip Counting
- Cross Curricular Movement
- 2st Grade Content OR Free Activity
- Cool Down Breathing
Warm Up
I’ve been excited for this one. I recently stumbled upon an activity on accident with 3rd grade incorporating dancing and yoga. The point of the video for third was to work on their balance in a fun way, but since my K-2 aren’t learning balance yet I figured the following videos would be great warm ups and lead ups into a balance and gymnastics unit.
PE Games: Yoga Freeze Dance had been the best activity my students and I have done so far.
Yoga Freeze Dance
This is a one minute clip of one of my classes warming up with our Yoga Freeze Dance video.
As you can tell from some of the kids, it’s a lot of fun. I highly recommend these these videos for your virtual physical education class activities.
Stretching/Flexibility: Skip Counting
Just like with K and 1st again, we practice the different ways to count. With 2nd grade, we started with 10’s, then 5’s and are about to start 2’s in the next few weeks.
Currently their classroom teacher is working on skip counting by 5’s with the kids, and but from what I’ve seen during our live PE sessions they are doing exceptionally well.
I share the number chart shown in the 1st grade section for students who need a little extra help.
CRoss Curricular Movement
Second grade is a little more fun when it comes to cross curricular virtual activities. For the first couple weeks we did math workouts. Since the students were learning how to add whole numbers 1-12, in our PE class we would add exercises.
For instance, the problem might read: add 5 pushups + 5 pushups. As a class we would count it out together, completing 10 pushups total for that problem. It’s also a great way to add fun new exercises into their world such as ice skaters, burpees, jump squats and shoulder touches.
Another fun activity we did was a vowel lesson. The kids classroom teacher had taught long and short vowels the previous week, so I made a Google Slide document with a variety of words the kids could read.
I show one word at a time and will call on students individually, and ask them to sound out and read the word. They then will decided if the word has a short vowel or long vowel sound and count how many letters are in the word. If it has a short vowel sound the whole class will do as many push ups as letters in the word. For long vowel sounds the whole class will do jumping jacks for as many letters are in that word.
This may seem like it takes a long time, but once the students catch on it can go pretty quickly! Remember I don’t necessarily teach new classroom content, I reinforce content the kids classroom teachers have already taught.
Second Grade Content or Free Activity
The cross curricular for the students is such a good way to help them understand concepts in a different way. But that doesn’t mean you have to shove math into their brains 24/7. So if they have had a a lot of classroom crossover in my PE class, I love to just let loose with them in a non educational way.
Free activity time built into their virtual PE give their brains a break, but keeps their bodies moving. One YouTube subscription I really like is called Little Sports. A 5-10 minute animated workout with music is a hit.
Scavenger hunts are also pretty fun. You can have kids find you items in their house, to get them up running around. Sometimes I’ll ask for them to find me something of a specific color, while other times I’ll ask for items starting with certain letters. We change it up a lot, but the best thing is getting to see them excited ready to share there home lives with me.
And for the kids who don’t feel comfortable sharing they just enjoy watching their classmates. But I can promise you that doesn’t happen often.
Cool Down Breathing
And just like the above grades, we focus on getting our heart rates back to a normal beat.
Closing Thoughts
When I said in the beginning of this post that I loved teaching virtually, I wasn’t lying. It’s an amazing experience I get to share with my students. I’m learning so much more than I ever thought I would about my students, and I am so grateful for that.
Whether you are virtual or hybrid, I hope you gained a little bit of insight from this post. My teaching is not perfect by any means, but what I am currently doing is working. That’s the main reason I needed to share!
Pretty soon I will be creating videos to help give you a visual on how I structure my classes. But the bottom line is if you have a plan and you’re decently organized, you’re going to do great. Don’t decide what you are going to teach five minutes before your classes start. That will just stress you out and the kids will notice.
Relax and enjoy this time. There are so many things out of your control, so focus on what you can do in the moment and give your students your best. They deserve it!
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