Ideas to get your students moving in the classroom

Idées pour faire bouger les élèves en classe

Learning healthy habits from a young age is a good predictor that these will continue to be present in an individual’s life later on. Eating healthy food, sleeping at least 8 hours, and doing physical activity are all important in a child’s life. Movement is essential to maintain the physical and mental health of children, as physical activity provides energy which leads to better performance in school. In this article, we share the best classroom ideas to get your students moving! 

How do you get your students to move in the classroom?

Sometimes convincing students to move in the classroom can be difficult, as the place is restrained and no one wants to appear silly in front of their peers. These classroom ideas are fun activities that incorporate movements that will optimize class time.

Follow the Leader

This game is one of those classics that never go out of style. Best of all, you won’t need any special material to play the game. The children must take turns being the leader, and the leader must be the one who directs others to imitate all the movements that he makes. The teacher can encourage children to jump, touch their ears, shuffle, crawl, or use their imagination to do creative things.

Team Building Activities

Animals Game

This is one of those fun learning activities that keep students active. Children must become animals, while imitating the noises and movements that each one of them makes. The teacher should be the one who says the names of the animals that the children should imitate. This activity also develops listening skills in children. They can walk around the room imitating a roaring lion, a hungry bear, a walking penguin, or a flapping fish.

Obstacle Courses

This is a great idea to make the classroom more active. To make an entertaining and effective obstacle course, teachers can use everything they have at hand: notebooks, pencil cases, cushions, and chairs. All these elements will serve to build a challenging and fun obstacle course. You can also do races with fun postures (ex: imitating dinosaurs) or do the races in teams of two while doing the traditional wheelbarrow.

The level of intensity needs to be considered by the adult in charge since having kids moving around sharp corners, such as desks, can be dangerous. The objective of this fun activity is not only to bring a smile to the face of students but to get their heart rate pumping. A middle ground must be found.

Yoga

Introducing yoga into the classroom has many benefits. There are different positions such as the warrior, the mountain, or the cat that are ideal for any time, at the beginning of the day or before or after a nap. Children will have a great time recreating the different postures, while increasing their flexibility, working their concentration, and eliminating muscle tension. Rather than wasting class time, this fun activity will optimize the rest of the minutes allotted.

Yoga is also a good way to relieve stress before exams, promote good posture, and improve coordination and balance. Children will disconnect from previous lessons, and focus on the present moment. Teachers who wish to introduce yoga in their classrooms should take lessons with professional instructors to ensure that the position maintained by the students won’t hinder their well-being in the long run.

Yoga isn’t only a physical activity, many exercises focus on breathing. This fun activity will get kids moving in a controlled fashion that won’t disturb the surrounding classes if the space of the room allows it. One of the problems teachers may encounter is that certain items of clothing aren’t appropriate for certain positions.

A school show that promotes healthy lifestyles

Upside Down World

To play this game, the teacher must control and supervise the game. It consists of saying different verbs and the boys and girls have to do just the opposite. They will have to sit when the teacher says “get up”, walk when he says “run”, and so on. This activity helps them coordinate and stay focused. It’s a lot of fun and challenging at the same time. Participants who make mistakes are eliminated.

This game can be made pedagogical if the questions that are asked were recently seen in class lessons. The listening skills and comprehension of the students will be put to the test as they have to give the wrong answer by knowing the right answer. This game won’t only have kids moving but also their synapses running.

6 Ways To Get Students Excited About Virtual Learning

Musical Chairs

To play this popular game, you need the same number of chairs as players minus one, and a stereo. All the chairs should be placed in a circle and students should go around them until the music stops. Then each of them should sit where they can. Whoever is left without a chair is eliminated and a chair is removed until only two players remain with only one chair left. 

You will see how all the students will have a smile on their faces while playing this! This game can be helpful to revitalize the classroom if the teacher senses the students are no longer paying much attention to what is going on in front of them on the board.

Question Train

This game will make the classroom more active. The teacher needs to prepare flashcards with questions on all the subjects students study. Multiplications, grammar rules, or historical dates are all fair game. The class should be split into two rows facing the teacher who will quiz the two students at the front of the row. The fastest student to answer gives a point to his team.

The two students who were just quizzed rush to the back of the line to wait their turn anew. What is lovely about this game is that it can be customized to test students on what they’ve just learned, and the teacher can see which students have difficulties in particular subjects. Additionally, this fun activity gets kids moving while not wasting any class time.

Organize a Virtual Fun Activity

Organizing a virtual competition is one of the best ways to get your students moving in the classroom. Kronos Experience has created a futuristic parallel universe filled with fascinating characters to promote healthy lifestyle habits among 5 to 12-year-olds. 

The concept is rather simple. In a future not so far from our time, humanity is facing serious problems. Physical inactivity and unhealthy habits are compromising both human health and survival. This activity will sensibilize students to be conscientious regarding their screen time and everyday habits in an original way.

Thanks to the efforts of the space-time agency KRONOS, the situation is improving. Its agents have gone back in time several times to influence the behavior of young people through school shows offered in primary/elementary schools. This time, the Agency is using virtual methods to save humanity, making its interventions more accessible than ever to schools around the world. This activity is more feasible in the context of the pandemic as virtual school has become the new norm for many students and teachers.

Live Virtual Shows for Elementary Schools