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Name of Activity:

Marathon Trick or Treating

Academic content:

Math skills.

Purpose of Activity:

The purpose of this activity is to give students the opportunity to develop fitness components (cardiorespiratory endurance, muscular fitness, and flexibility) while practicing math skills such as basic computations, statistics, and graphing.

Prerequisites:

Students need to have the math skills that are expected for their grade level.

Suggested Grade Level:

Grades 1-5.

Materials Needed:

Buckets, tokens, mats, paper, pencils, Halloween music, CD player.

Physical activity:

Cardiorespiratory endurance, muscular strength, flexibility.

Description of Idea

Preparation and set up:
• Place buckets at each station containing tokens to represent Halloween candy (marbles, poker chips, etc.)

• Place a sign at each station that says which exercise should be performed, for example, "5 Push ups", "10 Sit ups", "Jump Rope 20 times", etc.

• Put mats at the stations which require students to be on the floor (sit ups, stretches, etc.)

• The number of stations will vary with class size. Four students at each station at a time is a good number.

• Each station is worth a different amount of "candy," depending on the difficulty of the exercise. Vary the amounts from one to three pieces of "candy."

• Give each student a piece of paper that lists each station with a place to record amounts earned.

• Have pencils at each station.

• Give each student a Halloween bag.


The Game:

While the Halloween music is playing, students will run from station to station and perform the specified exercise/skill and collect the set amount of "candy" during a set amount of time. The stations should be spread out enough that the students will be able to sprint from one station to the next. Tell students that they need to try to complete as many stations as they can in the time allowed. After a set amount of time, stop the music and bring the children in. Have them check their heart rate, and count the amount of "candy" they have collected and record on their sheet of paper. Depending on the grade level, students can calculate:
- Total (addition)
- Mean (addition and division)
- Mode

Send them out a second time for the same amount of time. When you end the activity have the students count their ending totals and subtract their first total to find out how much they collected on their second round, again depending on the grade calculating:
- Total (addition)
- Mean (addition and division)
- Mode

Students could also make graphs illustrating the results, and possibly make a chart for class improvement.

Adaptations for Students with Disabilities

Include stations for students in wheelchairs: shuttle run, chin-up bar, hand weights.

Submitted by Michael Clark who teaches at Radford University in radford, VA. Thanks for contributing to PE Central! Posted on PEC: 4/14/2004.
Viewed 57368 times since 10/29/2003.

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Marathon Trick or Treating

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