The Fruit of Her Hands: Family Time Fitness

If you follow my blog or know me at all you know that I have spent the last 2 years (almost) losing over 80 lbs and am currently working on getting into shape (and still losing more weight). I was so excited to have the opportunity to use Family Time Fitness with my family. We received the Fitness 4 Homeschool Core 1 Curriculum for K-8.

The Fitness 4 Homeschool Curriculum allows homeschool parents to teach physical education without previous knowledge of physical education and athletic development. Our program, designed by experts in fitness training, nutrition and body movement, is designed to suit every age and ability level while affordably fitting into your budget. Our program combines flexibility and fun with a comprehensive curriculum to give your children a foundation for strong bodies and minds. -from website

If you are like me, you probably think that physical activity is enough for PE class. Family Time Fitness asserts that Physical Education (PE) is structured physical activity that develops an organized mind and body for students. Activities like one day co-op play, Wii Fit, Wii sport and individual sports are not considered physical education because they do not comprehensively teach and manage physical fitness in students. This program was started because of a lack of PE programs for homeschools.

I think we all know there are benefits to physical education. Here are a few that I find so important: Childhood obesity prevention (I have been obese for most of my adult life and some of my younger years- I do not want this for my kids!), Diabetes prevention (Diabetes is in my family. Again, this is not something I want my kids to have.), and weight management. Other benefits include improvement of gross motor skills, better self-confidence and increased energy and focus for academics. These are just a few of many that I chose to highlight.

Family Time Fitness should be used a minimum of three times per week but they strongly recommend using it five times a week. Each lesson takes 30-45 minutes to complete. I honestly have not figured a way to schedule that much PE into our week. We are fitting this in wherever we can. I put it on the kid's schedules every day but we don't always get to it.

The Fitness 4 Homeschool Curriculum includes a startup guide, PDF lesson plans, video demonstrations, assessment tools, reminder emails, lifetime curriculum and video updates, access to online webinars and certificates of completion. One curriculum purchase can be used for all your children, with no subscription or renewal fees. I have 6 children in 8th grade and below. For me this program works out to be less than $10 per child and I can continue to use this for the remainder of our homeschooling years. I think the price is very reasonable considering all that you get.

There are 260 lessons, printable charts for assessments, a grocery list, a nutrition log, meal planner and a daily food diary.

Here are the details:

Startup/Training Guide - The Startup Guide is a guide for parents and includes an introduction to physical education, information on what to expect from the program, safety information, how to integrate physical education into your curriculum, teaching tips and equipment information.

Lesson Plans – Each of the 260 professionally planned lessons arrives in PDF format and includes a List of Supplies, Warm-Up, Activity, Cool Down and Suggested Outdoor Activity. Each exercise is described in a detailed, user-friendly format for easy access. Each lesson provides 30-45 Minutes of physical activity. If you do all the activites that is over 7800 Minutes of activity a year! If you do the suggested outdoor activity you get an additional 10-15 minutes of physical activity.

A clip of one lesson

1-Page Summaries– Each lesson has a One-Page Summary to facilitate easy printing and portability. The summaries keep you from printing all 900+ Pages of Lesson Plans.

A clip of a one page summary (same lesson as above)

Video Demonstrations – Each exercise includes a demonstration video with real kids doing the exercises. There are over 200 instructional video demonstrations available to you with this curriculum, and you are guaranteed lifetime access to these videos as we update them.

This is a sample of one of the video demonstrations.

Assessment Tools – They provide tools to help track progress of the basic fundamental movements. Other downloadable tools include nutritional logs and meal planners for a comprehensive fitness approach.

a clip of the meal planner

a clip of the nutrition log

Encouragement Emails – During the first year of your course, they send you reminder emails each week day to keep you and your children motivated on your fitness journey. They also always include nutritional and fitness tips in the emails.

Online Webinars – You have access to regular online webinars and webinar archive for further in-depth instruction and tips on the curriculum.

The 260 lesson plans utilize repetition, but they are also progressive and sequential. The program is designed for all age levels and abilities, and because they believe that the learning process is most valuable with family engagement, the lessons are designed so that the whole family can join in the lessons. View the Scope and Sequence.

One of the really unique aspects of this program is that all of the lessons can be done inside! Seeing that much of the year it is just too cold here to do PE outside, this will be a real blessing. I also love being able to put the lessons up on the computer and instruct the kids from there. I will be honest, I have not been participating with the kids. I have my own exercise plan, so I just direct the children as to what they should do. Sometimes I can just describe what they should do, other times I might watch the videos ahead of time so I can demonstrate it quickly or just show them the video so they can see what to do. Although this picture was taken outside, we mostly have been doing this in the house.

Doing a ball activity

You do need some equipment but it is very basic and you can improvise too. You will need playground balls (or other ball), jump ropes (either commercial or something you make yourself), bean bags (or a small ball or even a rolled up pair of socks), foam balls (or a beach ball), a stop watch (I use one on my iPod touch or laptop), measuring tape, cones (or something you already have to use as markers), and hula hoops. They also list an exercise mat as an optional item. We don't have one of these. I had to purchase hula hoops and I did buy a jump rope too. It was under $20 for everything I needed because we had everything else already.

The kids are having a lot of fun with this. We learned that some of our kids are really good at hula hooping. Emma's record is over 40 minutes. My record? Less than 4 seconds. I cannot hula hoop at all. I am extremely pleased with Fitness 4 Homeschool Core 1 Curriculum . If you want to help your children or your whole family to be fit (or meet PE requirements in your homeschool), I highly recommend you give it a try.

Family Time Fitness also offers:

High School Fitness/PE
Learning the Language of Fitness and Nutrition Activity Workbooks
Basketball Sports Development Module
Online High School Health Class

Purchase Fitness 4 Homeschool Core 1 Curriculum for K-8 for $57 or upgrade to the Platinum package for $137. They do offer a free 2 day trial so you can see for yourself what it is like.

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