Have you heard of PLAYBuilder?
We are sharing some of the activities from our PLAYBuilder tool to try out at home to keep kids moving and mentally engaged. Whether it’s, Animal Play or Balance on Three, these games should help keep you and your family moving and laughing in no time! To learn more about PLAYBuilder, visit http://getplaybuilder.com
Balance on Three
Overview
Duration: 5 Mins
Ages: 3 – 9
Fundamental Movement Skill(s): Balance
Equipment: None
Environment: backyard, rec room, space where everyone can move in their individual space
Activity Instructions
- Participants move around the playing area using any locomotor movement (skip, gallop, log roll).
- On the cue, “Balance on three,” the participants must balance safely on three body parts (e.g. two feet and one hand) and hold for five seconds.
- Have the participants move around the play area using a new locomotor movement. Call out the cue “Balance on three,” but this time, they must balance in a new way on three body parts (e.g. bum, two feet).
- The activity continues this way until participants start to run out of ideas. You can give hints if they get stuck and you can also showcase creative participant’s poses for others to copy.
- Change the cue to be “Balance on four” or “Balance on one” to encourage balancing on a different number of body parts..
Animal Play
Overview
Duration: 5 Mins
Ages: 2 – 10
Fundamental Movement Skill(s): Hopping, Jumping, Running, Walking
Equipment: None
Environment: Field, backyard, room with furniture moved to the side
Activity Instructions
- Participants move around the play area like different animals. For example: Flying birds, jumping frogs, hopping flamingos, running cheetahs, walking elephants, etc.
- Suggest different kinds of animals or categories of animals (e.g. Australian animals, marine animals) to try moving like.
- For younger children, read a book with animals and ask them to move like the animals in the book.
- For older children, take turns as the person who chooses the type of animals to move like.
Bowling School
Overview
Duration: 15 Mins
Ages: 9 – 15
Fundamental Movement Skill(s): Object Control, Targeting
Equipment: Balls (sock balls, tennis balls), Bowling Pins (cardboard boxes, lego towers, toilet paper rolls), Start line markers (chalk, painters tape, cones, towel)
Environment: field, backyard, hallway
Activity Instructions
- In level one, set up one pin and start approximately 2m away from the pin (or appropriate distance for space available and age of participants).
- One person rolls the ball trying to knock over the pin.
- The other participant stands in a safe area, retrieves the ball and rolls it gently back to the roller.
- Rollers get two rolls and then the other person tries.
- If a participant succeeds at knocking the pin over they graduate to the next level.
- If they do not knock down the allotted pins they stay in that level for their next turn until they can graduate to the next level.
- Create 10 levels that get progressively more challenging by increasing the distance, number of pins or type of throw used.
- The first participant that gets to level 10 and knocks down all the pins wins the game.
- Ask questions such as what strategies can you use to help improve your accuracy? Did moving back further make it more difficult to hit the target? If so, what strategies did you use to improve accuracy?