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Gross Motor Play

Gross motor play is an important part of our school day.  Gross motor play happens right before our circle time in our classroom because moving the body gets the brain primed to learn.  We do a variety of activities for gross motor play ranging from free play, where children can run and play however they wish, to more structured games and focused standards like skipping and hopping.
 We use hula hoops to sort items such as these items in our Community Helpers theme.

 Tape large letters or numerals on the floor and allow children to drive around it with a car.
 Give each student two paper plates and turn on music. Students must stay on plates and move around the room as if they are ice skating.
 Practice pushing and pulling heavy boxes.
 Crawl under and over chairs.
 Blow up balloons and release them in a large room. Have students collect the balloons and return them to a designated area.
 Play with bubbles and sidewalk chalk.
 Tie bells to hula hoops and have children crawl through the hoop without ringing the bells.
 Hand each student a flashcard and then lay the remaining flash cards around the room. Students move around the room to find their matching flashcard.
 Sidewalk chalk hopscotch is fun.
 Rolling hula hoops to see how far they go is also fun.
 Stand paper towel rolls around the room and have students jump over them.
 Tape a railroad track on the floor and practice walking, jumping, running on it or over it.
 Bowling and snowball fights are fun games to engage the students.

 Lay many colored hula hoops around the room. Roll a die with colored sides. Whatever color the die lands on is the color hula hoop students run and jump into.
 Or lay hula hoops around the room and only allow the students to walk and move inside a hula hoop.
 Ring toss or ring transfer from one cone to another are two more good activities. These are just several of the activities we do throughout our year to have fun while moving and working on our gross motor skills.

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