Make Fitness More Fun with a Spelling Workout

Whether you’re a gym teacher looking for something fun to do with your kids on rainy days or a parent with the same problem, this alphabet workout from 730 Sage Street is a great thing to have handy.

Each letter of the alphabet corresponds to a particular movement, such as jumping up and down 10 times (A), bending down and touching your toes 20 times (S) or 10 pushups (Z).

The idea is that you can spell your name and do the workout you get.

I have problems with this in a big group, because some kids will have short names and some long (and some like my poor kid, whose name is short but who has repeating letters). Maybe with a group or for kids with really long names you could have them work out their initials, or choose a four-letter word or roll dice to choose a certain number of letters or something to make it a little more fair.

Also, there are somersaults, cartwheels and pushups on this list, which not every kid of every age can do, but this is a fun place to start building in some playful exercise.

There are two versions of this workout for adults, too, if you want to get in on the fun. Or use the kid’s version and work out alongside your kiddos.

[Photo via 730 Sage Street.]

If you are looking for fun active games to get the kids moving, I highly recommend this Floor Is Lava Board Game

Did you know that October is Squirrel Awareness Month? I didn’t know we needed more awareness of these little creatures, but let’s take it as a sign to learn more about squirrels!

Let’s start with some fun facts via Kids Konnect: did you know there are five subfamilies and more that 280 species of squirrels? The smallest are pygmy squirrels and the largest, the Bhutan giant flying squirrel, can be longer that 4 feet (1.2 meters).

Tree squirrels can climb down trees so fast because their ankles can rotate 180 degrees, allowing them to grab the tree bark as they go down. While most squirrels don’t survive their first year of life, they can live five to 10 years in the wild and squirrels have been known to live up to 20 years in captivity!

Rhythms of Play has more fun facts and tips for observing squirrels if you want to add some real life nature to your nature study.

We always like to start these collections with life cycle and parts of the animal printables, so let’s grab the squirrel life cycle an parts of a squirrel worksheets from Montessori Nature. (It doesn’t look like these are free any more but they have a whole unit study on squirrels you can buy that includes life cycle and parts activities, characteristics of different kinds of squirrels, a printable poster, information about predators and more.)

Grab the squirrel lapbook printable (free with email address) from Homeschool Share to learn the parts of a squirrel, where they live, what they eat, whether they hibernate and more. There’s also a nut taste test printable, a place for making observations about squirrels, life cycle of an oak tree, games and more.

Simple Everyday Mom has some cute squirrel themed worksheets including tracing the letter s, labeling the parts of a squirrel and a letter s maze. She also has more activity pages with a squirrel theme, including matching, a more traditional maze and a counting and graphing activity.

Work on letter recognition with this squirrel and acorn game printable from Teaching Mama. I love the idea of hiding the letters in a fall themed sensory bin for kids to find, identify and match to the letter on the worksheet.

For older kids you can do this “if I were a squirrel” writing prompt from Lesson Planet.

And throw in a little counting with these squirrel and acorn tens frame printables from JDaniel4’s Mom, which you can use to count real acorns or any other little fall themed thing you have handy.

Have you read?

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