In elementary school, physical education becomes the foundation for a child’s physical growth and knowledge. In later grades, PE games become a way to inject daily activity into a student’s life.

Considering the skyrocketing childhood obesity rates, PE curriculum has become even more essential to young, developing minds and bodies. An estimated one in three children is at least overweight. Obesity puts kids at risk for numerous health problems, including diabetes, cancer, and heart disease.

Strangely enough, in a society focused on health and concerned with the general well-being of children, PE resources are heavily lacking.

Standards and Lesson Plans

Despite the lack of monetary resources, the standards and lesson plans surrounding the nation’s physical education curriculum are still quite appropriate. As a general concept, the curriculum is designed to promote children’s daily activity while incorporating key social skills. This helps them develop a sense of fitness and a healthy mindset to support that fitness.

Standards help as a means of measuring the skills and progress of individual students while providing a template for progressive learning. The standards and activities in elementary school, for example, are not nearly as advanced as those for high school students.

As an example, here is a sample set of standards for elementary school students in California.

• Standard 1: Students must demonstrate motor skills and movement patterns necessary to perform various physical activities.
• Standard 2: Students must demonstrate knowledge of movement concepts, principles, and strategies and their application to physical fitness and activities.
• Standard 3: Students must assess and maintain a level of physical fitness to improve health and physical performance.
• Standard 4: Students must demonstrate knowledge of physical fitness concepts, principles, and strategies to improve health and performance.
• Standard 5: Students must demonstrate and utilize knowledge of psychological and sociological concepts, principles, and strategies and how they apply to learning and performance of physical activities.

As you can see, these standards interconnect, providing a steady sense of progress as students go from standard to standard.

Games and Activities

The great thing about these standards is that they are broad enough to allow for a wide variety of activities. For instance, the first standard, as complex as it might seem, could include a simple game of tag or hide and seek. The second standard could call for activities like a game of basketball or hockey or even line dancing.