Homeschool World Forum

If anyone has any practical advice for Physical Education day for a nonathletic homeschool MOM with a 7 and 8 year old I would appreciate it.

what do you do now? we have a time when we get together with other homeschoolers and play at the playground or GYM. Sometimes we organize games, sometimes we just have fun. Maybe your boys would like to learn how to play games, or just hit a ball, (great for hand and eye coordination) Boys don't need to be told to play and be physical, given the opportunity they should thrive.

Thanks for the advice. This will be my first year to homeschool.

This might seem like an odd suggestion, but you could try juggling. It's exercise that builds muscle evenly in both sides of the body, it's good for hand-eye coordination, and it requires practically no space (unless juggling 5+ objects, in which case a higher ceiling is good) or special equipment.

Do you have a swimming pool close by? Even if you can't swim, you and your children can enjoy the physcial exercise while playing in the water. Swimming uses almost every muscle in the body.

My son is not very athletic and for P.E. he walked 3 hours a week. You can also do gardening, provided you have a big garden (such as a community garden) that you can work on most of the year. There is also golf and community swimming pools (most kids love swimming). And, you can do a log book to record the activity, where the parent just records (typed or printed) each week how many minutes and on what days children worked and what was worked on or learned (worked 20 minutes on Tuesday, worked 40 minutes on Thursday),etc. and (walked at the park) (walked in neighborhood), etc. My portfolio was reviewed for several years in the state of Maryland (every 6 months) and this walking was acceptable.

There are some fun videos out there for kids. We used Miss Christy's Dance Class video when my kids were young. She teaches jazz, ballet, and tap dance. I posted a review for it on my website.
There are also Tai Chi videos if you think they might like martial arts.
My kids also liked the Yoga Fitness for Kids video by Gaiam.

Well for starters you can start with a routine of jogging (which does not require to you to be athletic) followed by some stretching and yoga exercise which can be done indoors or even in a park early in the morning. You can get a lot of yoga videos online. Once your and your kids bodies get flexible and used to exercising you can actually start off with sports.