Physical fitness during 4-H club meetings: Fitnes scavenger hunts
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EmailHealth is one of the four H’s in the pledge. At a 4-H club meeting it is important to have some time for kids to be physically active. This article explores developing a fun fitness scavenger hunt at your meeting.
According to the Michigan 4-H Club Development Guide, every 4-H club meeting should have a break of 15 to 20 minutes for fun, group building, recreational or social time. There should also be 15 to 20 minutes for group discussion orbusiness, and 40 to 60 minutes of program activities and learning.
It is during the recreational, or social time that you can have youth do an organized activity like a fitness scavenger hunt.
Before the meeting, members should be told to wear tennis shoes or workout clothes. Also, they might want to help with bringing supplies for the activity.
Supplies needed include jump ropes, hula hoops, cones or markers (for obstacles), index cards, music and a music player (optional).
Before your meeting, you will want to come up with six to eight stations for the scavenger hunt. Below are recommend stations by Michigan State University Extension.
- Crazy dancing
- Arm Circles
- Jump Roping
- Jumping Jacks
- Hulla Hooping
- Skipping
- Ice Skating
- Touch your toes
Each station will need to have an index card with instructions on what to do at that station. An example might be, do 10 jumping jacks. Break the club into teams. Each team should come up with a name. Each team then has a card with the different stations listed on it. Each team card will have a different order to complete each station.
Once the activity starts, teams will go from station to station and do the activity that is assigned. You can also time them to see which team gets done the fastest.
The goal of this activity is to have the kids associate physical activity with having fun. After the activity is done, discuss with the members about which station was the hardest, which one was the easiest or which one was the most fun.
This activity came from the Jump Into Foods and Fitness Curriculum which has a lot more ideas of activities that you could do with your 4-H club around foods and fitness.
