Field Days in Physical Education Class!

Step right up and listen as I take you through the whirlwind that is planning the perfect field day. With the same excitement as a kid in a candy store, I reminisce about the glory days as a participant and the thrills of bringing the event to life now. Whether you're soaking up the sun or bundled up in snow gear, I've got you covered with creative and thematic event ideas. From the splashy hilarity of water games to the heart-pumping energy of Olympic-style competitions and the nostalgic pull of a carnival, I detail how to tailor your field day to any season or interest. But there's more than just fun and games; I get real about the nitty-gritty of volunteer coordination and the magic of a unique grading system that ensures everyone leaves with memories to cherish.

Ever wonder how to get the best out of your pint-sized volunteers? Take a page from my book as I reveal the secrets behind harnessing the power of upper elementary students to lead the charge, ensuring a field day that's not only epic but also runs like clockwork. With the savvy use of tech to sift through eager helpers and the insight of teachers to guide the way, I share how to craft an environment of responsibility and fun. And for those hungry for a sneak peek at my favorite field day shenanigans, I promise tales of obstacle courses and Ninja Warrior-style challenges that will have you itching to get out there and play. So, whether you're a seasoned pro or a curious newcomer, I invite you to join our PE Nation in this journey of celebration, competition, and professional growth. Be great today!

Dave

FREE E-Book: https://supersizedphysed.us18.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=289486a5abf1f1b55de651a5e&id=4c476cb01

Leave a review: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-supersized-physed-podcast/id1435115135

My TPT store with Task cards: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Supersizedphysed

Email me at dcarney1017@gmail.com I'd love to hear from you!

Website for the book: https://www.teacherchefhockeyplayerbook.com/

Transcript

Dave: 0:10

Hello and welcome to the Supersize for Zed podcast. My name is Dave and I'm here to talk about field day. Yes, field day, it's coming up for a lot of us soon, very soon, and I want to talk about that today. So let's go. All right. Pe Nation, thanks for tuning in today. So field day, let's talk.

Dave: 0:43

Field day is one of my favorite times of the year. I enjoy field day. I enjoyed it as a student and I hope you do too. I hope you don't take this as a oh my gosh, it's like craziness and I just have so much work to do. It is true, it takes a lot of work, but it is well worth it and I hope you really enjoy it. So there's different types of field days, so let's talk about all this kind of stuff Now.

Dave: 1:10

I used to have field day in the middle of the year, which is kind of crazy, but it's true. In Florida it just gets so hot that we had field day for a little bit in either mid-December or early January. It depended on our half days or early dismissal days. We just do it then when it wasn't so hot, it wasn't so crazy out and, yes, I believe that was in mid-January. So, again, not ideal for you winter folks up there up north where I used to live, like near Buffalo or any of those other places that get cold in January. That probably would not work, unless you want to do a winter themed which is possible field day. That'd be probably pretty cool. So, speaking of themes, there's many different ways to do field days and I've heard about them, I've seen them, I've seen a lot of really cool stuff and I want you to really think about your theme and let me go over a few right here. So one thing I've learned a lot. One thing I used to do at the end of the year is field days with water and that was fun for the kids. It was a lot of work and it was crazy messy. It was just ridiculous and we just didn't have a lot of access to water. We had a couple of hoses but with all the games we did, we'd just be constantly filling up buckets and it was just there was sand everywhere. The kids were just a mess and full of like mud and they would leave for the day with our pavilion all muddy and dirty and it was just crazy. I mean, again, it was fun and it's fine to do, but it's not something that I want to keep doing, I don't think. So that's one is like a water type field day. The next is Olympic, and I was actually considering that this year, because of the Olympics coming up this summer, that would not be a bad idea at all. I'm more of a traditionalist, I guess, when it comes to field day, and I'll go over mine in just a moment, but again, that's not a bad idea at all.

Dave: 3:11

Some kind of theme I've seen Star Wars themes, I've seen just all sorts of. I guess depends on what is going on in the world as far as the hot new movie or whatever. So you could definitely work on different types of themes. I've seen carnival, carnival themes, and when I when I say carnival themes, I guess what I mean is, yes, I've seen, uh, field days with just carnivals, like actual carnival type games. But I've also. To me that means the style of they can just go wherever they want, like kids can come out and they can just go to whatever station they want, and I know some of you do that, and that's I think it's a great idea. Now, for me I just don't think that's feasible. No-transcript.

Dave: 4:01

So, my students, we do field days of kindergarten, first together, then second, third, then fourth and fifth, and so that's a lot of classes it's about. It depends about 15-ish type stations on the high end and then a little bit lower for the younger kids. So it's just a lot of stations. So it's just a lot of stations. And, by the way, this is another little tidbit, because the teachers are supposed to, as long as they're during their contractual hours, I guess they are supposed to walk with their classes and go to them each station, station by station, each number, and basically stay with them the whole time.

Dave: 4:43

And if we did a carnival type way or again, kind of go wherever you want, I know that the teachers would just be completely hands-off. They'd go sit on a bench and just chit-chat. So I don't think that would be well-supervised. But again, if you have a smaller school or smaller class sizes, maybe that's an option as well. So I've also seen competitive, like they're just medals for fastest runner and farthest long jump and things like that, where you give out medals for the 40-yard dash.

Dave: 5:17

Now, I do some of those things and I'll get to that in a moment or in a little bit, but I don't give out medals for that Now you can. There's nothing wrong with that. I just again, I have so many kids and it's hard to get enough volunteers and to track all that. So you definitely could do a more of a competitive one, and I think that's more of a I don't want to say old school, but that was definitely done back in the day. So you know, not a bad idea, I don't disagree with it. I just would rather do things that they're more, you know, cohesive with their class and show good sportsmanship and working together as a team.

Dave: 5:51

Another way I've seen it as far as the competition is, I would give the teachers a sheet like a grade sheet for each station, and whoever ran the station kids and adults, adults, which we'll talk about in a little bit they would give them a grade if they participated, they showed good sportsmanship, they would cheer each other on and at the end we'd give out a trophy or not, maybe more of a, yeah, a small trophy or some kind of medals to the, the teacher that that won, that had the most points. What I noticed at least the one time I did it was that a teacher just kind of fudged the numbers and never gave it to anybody. That was kind of volunteering. So she just gave her class which, by the way, was not a great behavior type class all the good grades, like just gave them all the best marks and turned it in. And then I had a real problem on my hands because I had to, at the end of the the day or at the end of the field day, announced the winners and I didn't know what to do.

Dave: 6:53

And I remember this, this is, this is like a good 10 years ago. I remember just looking at my parents like what do I do? Like I know she just made these numbers up and her class is not the best class and it never was, and I can't give her this, this medal or this. I think it was again. I think it was a small trophy, and they agreed with me and I called a different teacher up to the stage and, um, I'm sure she was not happy with that, but I, I think I just made made up a hey, it was a tie, but you know whatever and yeah, it was a big mess. So I'm not going to do that again. I learned a lot in my past 13 or 14 years of teaching PE that I'm not going to do that ever again.

Dave: 7:36

Now the next thing I'll say and I could have made this a boomer, but I did not do it is have a plan either way, type it up, get on a Google Doc or some kind of thing where you can send out to the teachers. Here's the plan, here's the schedule, here's the rotations and here's the time of everything. Or at least when we start, when we end, make sure everything is set and it's gone through by your administration. As far as if you have to move lunches around, things like that In the past again, not recently, but they've done bag lunches on those days it depends how long your field day is. I only do it for two hours, and then we have regular classes, which is a totally kind of different world.

Dave: 8:20

When you're kind of in the mode of this go go, go, go, go, and then all of a sudden you have to clean everything up, and by the mode of this, like go, go, go, go, go, and then all of a sudden you have to clean everything up and, by the way, hey, here's another class coming right at you. Now, I've done it before. We're also worked field day like all day, and the other classes had to, I think, have some. I don't know what they did for specials, can't remember, but they worked it out. So it depends on how much time you have and how much time per station and things like that. But make sure you have a plan, make sure it's typed out, make sure you send it to the teachers or have a brief meeting.

Dave: 8:50

I think I did that a couple years ago where I, at the end of a faculty meeting, I asked for 10 minutes and I got up on my little cafeteria stage and talked to the teachers and showed them everything and of course, somebody got one of the rotations wrong. And the way I do it, if you mess up one time, like if a teacher, a teacher, correct the whole rotation and it's happened before where you know I have you starting at this station and you follow this class all day and my stations are numbered and you have to go in order of your stations and this happened more than once where a teacher just decided to go over they felt like going and that just messed up everything, like absolutely everything. And I try to make sure they know that that, hey, you can't just do that. And if you show up late, that happens as well. I'm sorry you missed the rotation. Or you know, if you want to try to make it up at the end when we're all leaving, you want to do it real quick or something, but that's not the greatest either. So they have to be on time and we have to start on time and make sure you do time it. I usually blow the whistle or, if you have some kind of air horn, I have music playing, things like that and then I announce the rotation, each rotation, and I give them a little transition time to move from station to station and then we start up again. So if they're late, uh sorry, okay.

Dave: 10:17

Next is how do you show what, where your places are, what your things are? So I use Google earth and, combined with sketch S, k, I, t, c, h, I believe, it's a free app and I've used it for years. I don't use it a lot, but I use it during field day. So what I do is I take a photograph from Google Earth and that photograph is of my PE area. Usually it's the whole school, but then I'll kind of zoom in and just get my whole field and everything. And it's funny because they've done things differently in the past and they've added a new track and things like that, like a parent pickup line, and it's still not on Google Earth. It's been a couple of years. So I take that and I put it into Skitch and from there you can add numbers of the stations and you can move things around and it's really simple. I'm not the techiest guy, but it's pretty simple, and so I sent out the map of where they should start and the rotations. So that's a really good resource to have. Now some of you might have something different than that. I just I've been using that for a few years now and I find that that works really really well. All right, next man, I should have done a boomer.

Dave: 11:25

Next we'll talk volunteers and kids. So what I do is I don't want to rely on the parents and I have great parents, but I don't want to rely on them because they show up late. They're chit-chatting A lot of them that sign up through the office. The office sends out like a scheduling tool, whichever one they use If they want, like a sign-up genie. I think that's what they use that kind of stuff. They sign up and then they come out and they're volunteering that kind of stuff. They sign up and then they come out and they, you know they're volunteering. Sometimes they feel like volunteering means they're going to follow their child around the whole time and they didn't really. Oh, I didn't know that. So it's like no, you sign up to help at a station. So I don't rely on the parents to help. I have, like I said, I have great parents and they a lot of them do help. I don't rely on that, though.

Dave: 12:10

What I do is I get kids to do it. This year I used to just pick and give them a kind of sheet of paper, say, hey, go get the sign. You're a field day helper if you want. Now I make them put in I don't know five minutes of work in my Google Classroom. I put out a Google form. Why am I having trouble saying Google today? I don't know why I make a form. It's real simple. It's name, teacher, name, which I make check, check marks or check boxes. They can just pick and then write two to three sentences as to why you want to be a field day helper.

Dave: 12:42

I figure if that'll weed out the kids who say they want to be field day helpers but they're like they don't want to put in the work Again, it's five minutes If you can't find five minutes, I tell them, then it's not that important to you. So from there I'll pick and all my parents help pick some field day helpers from third, fourth and fifth grade. Now I don't love having third graders because they're a lot younger but they've done a great job in the past so I pick really good kids because I need third graders during the fourth and fifth grade day to run stations. And then during K-1, I'll usually have it doesn't matter, I guess either fifth or fourth, and then second and third. I'll have fifth or fourth, it just doesn't matter, I'll just pick. It depends on their schedule and this year fifth grade actually has some things going on, so they have to do one day and not the other, things like that. So again, I'd rather teach my kids how to do it and then the parents come and they help just run the stations and eventually they get it.

Dave: 13:39

And I definitely want eyes on certain ones that are kind of. You know can be a little either iffy or dangerous or whatever, like not super dangerous, but like tug of war. I want a parent there, I want a parent or two or more at my rally yard obstacle course because I don't want to be falling and hurting themselves. Things like that do anything dangerous. So it doesn't mean I'm doing dangerous things. It just means I want to make sure there's eyes on those.

Dave: 14:05

Definitely, and usually my, my kids do really good, my students do really well. They're well. I only pick the best of the best. I might give a wild card pick to my um, the teachers, and just say, okay, I picked these two kids, you pick one more from this list of students that signed up. So I'd like to give the teachers a little input, but ultimately I want to pick and I also don't know if they're, though it's the end of the year if they owe, if they owe work or if they need to read for their AR goal or something like that, then hey, sorry you. Maybe it could be motivation for them to do it. Or it could be sorry they can't do field day because they're not caught up and their grades are not to par or up to par. So it's a good motivation. I've been talking about it with the kids for a while, so they're really excited about it, and I've got a lot of sign-ups already. So I'm going to make some decisions this week.

Dave: 14:53

All right, here's what you've been waiting for. Should I make this a cowbell tip of the day? Maybe I will. I need to add something to this. I needed something I need to do, boomers. All right, here it is your cowbell tip of the day. All right, this will be a long tip of the day because I'm going to just tell you some of my favorite games. Now, these are not the water ones, these are just the regular ones. I do have a list of water ones and if any of you like to reach out, I can send you some some of these games. If you're not sure, when I just I'm not going to go into deep, deep depth with these games, I'm going to tell you some of them. So here's my some of my favorite ones.

Dave: 15:36

So any kind of obstacle course is great. I have the Rally Yard obstacle course, which I know some of you have but a lot of you don't. I wrote grants for them. That's a whole other story, things like that. So, definitely, obstacle course is one. But also I'll say that I always turn, even before I had the obstacle course. I'll turn the playground if you have access to it or if it's near you, which it is for us. I'll turn the playground into some kind of Ninja Warrior course. Nothing crazy, but set up agility ladders and they have to maybe weave through the swing set. They have to go up and down the slide, up the slide and down and go to a hula hoop and do some jumping jacks, something where there are hurdles, I'll have things like that. So something like that would be great. Any kind of obstacle course is awesome.

Dave: 16:20

All right, I'm a big cup stack, bucket stack guy, so definitely bucket stacks with a scooter. So you have to scoot down or you don't have scooters. I don't have a lot of scooters. I had a lot of my old school. I only have, I mean, 10 at the most at the school and they're kind of expensive. I didn't realize how expensive they were. So I don't do scooters a lot, but I'll do it on field day. So I have to scoot down and put a bucket down and then come back and the next person goes and it's a bucket relay like a six stack, like a pyramid, three, two, one things like that.

Dave: 16:52

I do putt-putt. I have first tee golf. But even if you don't, just get some putters donated and they can putt to a target Tug of War, like I said, I used to make that a two-class game. One class rotates out. That's where some of the teachers don't understand that it's not that big of a deal but a two-class game. You could also do boys versus girls. You could do teachers versus kids. You could do anything like that. Any kind of relays I have tennis ball relays, soccer relays, basketball or brain ball. I have brain ball. Wow, I have a lot of cool stuff. I just realized Brain ball relays, things like that with a spell of word or collect treasure, things like that. I have a nice little rest station, also under the pavilion and that's along with the obstacle course, the obstacle course on one side and then freezy pops, kind of dance party and rest area. That's one and I'll have parents run the freezy pop station. They like that. They're in the shade, it's nice.

Dave: 17:48

The long jump like I said, the kids love long jump. I think I've told the story before about how I only remember a few things from elementary school and one of them was jump over the Brook and that's what it is. It's. It's just long jump that gets that. You take two like yard sticks or even two hockey sticks and you just make it longer and longer and longer. They have to get back in line and run and jump and run and jump and make a couple of lines if there's a lot of kids and they love it, they absolutely love it. So that's a fan favorite, along with 40 yard dash. I'll set up four lines and they can do relays, they can do four kids against each other and just go and they love it. I do things like launch it. I'm going to bring that back this year where you take some what do you call it? Exercise bands like the green ones. This is from PE to the max.

Dave: 18:40

He put that out with you kind of pull it back and you take a tennis ball and just kind of shoot it in the air at a target. I usually put some targets up or I'll try to have them land it on a parachute that's out in the middle of the field, things like that. One time I had them aim at us. I was driving around my not mine, but the golf cart I borrowed from the custodial staff on field days. So I drive around. I'm like I was trying to get him to hit me. Wasn't the smartest thing, but it's kind of fun. So also I'll put out Topgolf. That's where they just kind of finish up golfing, they can hit to targets. Doing Topgolf, like golf wedges and things like that, just chipping, and things like that.

Dave: 19:19

Pizza Box Relay, again, any kind of relays are fun. That's what relay is all about just having fun, being with your friends, end of the year celebration. So those kind of games are my go-tos. Now I have other ones. There's other, especially relays, a lot of those Egg and Spoon. If you want to do like a, what do you call those sack relays? Oh, what do you call those sack relays? Oh, I do have a relay like that where I have those ankle bracelets, where they it's like a three-legged race, where they kind of they're kind of tied together. Those are also a lot of fun. The kids love those. Those are some of my go-to games and I always tweak a little bit, I add some, I take some out and, yeah, play around with it, find your theme, figure out what you want to do and that is your cowbell tip of the day.

Dave: 20:14

Thank you everyone for tuning in. I really do appreciate it. As always, go to supersitesfizadcom for more information or leave a review. I need to give you a different call to action. Leave a review If this helps you at all in any way makes you think, makes you grow, makes you learn, makes you laugh, anything like that. The reviews do help. This gets the word out to more educators to hopefully spread good practices. So, with that PE Nation, have a great day, week, weekend, whenever you're listening to this, and let's keep pushing our profession forward. Thank you.