Boot Camp!

I've succumbed to the insanity once again and have been going to boot camp three days a week for the last four weeks or so now. It's a different one than I did last year - more of a circuit thing with all kinds of different equipment - medicine balls, resistance bands, skipping ropes, agility ladders... tire innards filled with sand that we haul around whilst running stairs or doing wind sprints.

Yeah. BOOT. CAMP. It's intense.

BUT, as I've done many times before (like this and this, for example), what I do is take something that I'm doing in my own life and incorporate it into the classroom. In this case, I'm running "PRIII-MA-RY! BOOT! CAMP!" for my kids in gym this month. We have stations like jumping jacks and push ups, and coordination stations where they throw a ball against a wall and try to catch it, co-operation stations where they have to work together to pass a ball from side to side... all kinds of good stuff! After each station we all circle up and do a group activity together for a minute or so. Today I had them squat down like they were sitting in a chair and then run in place really fast. Every now and then I'd yell "LIE DOWN!" "GET UP!" or other random directions.

They L-O-V-E-D it! The giggles, the squeals! It was SO much fun! I had a big hand drum I took into the gym with me, and at the end of each station, as my "stop" signal, I'd bang it: BOOM BA-DA BOOM BOOM! and the kids would all shout back in the same rhythm, "PRI-MA-RY BOOT CAMP!"

They get to yell, they get to move, and *I* get to tire them out! Man, even I was breaking a sweat today!

But I tell you, these kids are SO funny trying to do these exercises. Balls flying everywhere, skipping ropes tripping them up, and the push up station. OOOOH the push up station. Ever watched a 7 year old try to do a push up?

There's the butt in air version, the lie on the ground and lift your shoulders in the air version, the kneel on all fours and just dip your chin to the ground version... all of which are hilarious and so, so cute.

Gotta keep doing boot camp, if only for comic relief!