Keep the Party Moving with Active Games!

Classroom celebrations come in all shapes and sizes—recognizing birthdays, holidays, and class achievements—but they should all focus on having FUN! Including active games during classroom celebrations is a great way to help keep students engaged and in motion, while also encouraging brain development, creativity, and reducing stress.

Physical activity stimulates the release of dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin; all chemicals in the brain that make you feel good, so students can keep that celebratory feeling going strong long after the party’s over.

Offer to lead these active games as part of your child’s next classroom celebration:

• Active Reading: Read a story with lots of active verbs like climb, run, jump, shake, and wiggle. Have the students stand and act out the verbs while you read.
• Dance to the Music!: Host a dance party or play freeze dance with the class’s favorite tunes.
• Scavenger Hunt: Hide objects around the room for students to find—you can increase the activity level by leaving a note for a specific exercise or movement they need to do when they find the item.
• Simon Says: There’s lots of ways to rev up this game (and everyone’s heart rate)—jogging, shooting baskets, and squats can all easily be done in place.

Holidays/Observances

• Valentine’s Day: What better day to get everyone’s heart thumping with physical activity? Have students exchange cards with different exercises written on them. After completing the exercise, students find additional partners with which to exchange cards and complete exercises. Teach students how to measure their heart rates before and after exercising so they can see the difference it makes.
• 100th Day of School: Set up 10 stations around the classroom where students perform a physical activity (squats, jumps, touching their toes, arm circles, etc.) with one set of 10 repeated movements. At the end of the circuit they’ll have completed 100 physical activities! Or, as an alternative, choose a few exercises and see how many of each activity they can do in 100 seconds.
• Fall Harvest: Take the class on a nature walk around the school. Collect items like leaves, twigs, acorns, and pinecones to bring back to the classroom and use in a craft project.
• Thanksgiving: Host your own Turkey Trot! Set up cones on a field or in the gym to mark off the course. Give each student a paper cut out of a turkey feather for each lap they complete and then use them all to decorate a classroom turkey to mark their success. 
• Winter: Have an indoor snowball fight with soft plush snowballs or pompoms or toss beanbag “snowballs” into buckets from increasing distances.