Incorporating more movement into your students’ school day is easy. Especially, when you have a go-to list of easy-to-implement activities. This infographic features 8 short yet effective classroom movement ideas. They work for all ages and can be done at any time of day.

Whether you are starting your day with movement, adding activity breaks to transition times, or using exercise to refocus students on their work, these ideas bring both physical activity and fun to your classroom.

1. Pass Notes

Invite every student to write an exercise or movement on a slip of paper or an index card. have all students stand and quickly pass one another notes around the class. When you say, “FREEZE!” students must perform teh actions on their cards. Repeart.

2. Measure Around the Room

Challenge your students to measure a variety of things in the room – chairs, desks, doors, windows – using yardsticks and rulers. Record their answers and make a chart of the biggest and smallest things.

3. Dance Party Days

Designate special days (every Friday? Students birthdays? First Monday of the Month?) as Dance Party Days. On these days, periodically play appropriate up-tempo songs and invite kids to show off their best moves.

4. Take the Long Way

Before your students move classrooms for specials, stop class 5 minutes early and take the long way to their next classroom or learning location.

5. Switch Seats for Math

Put a math problem on the board and have students complete it on a piece of paper. When everyone has finished, have them stand up and move to the next desk, check their classmate’s answers to problem number one, and then do problem number two. Continue until every student has done every problem and checked every problem.

6. Play Cards

Take a standard deck of cards and assign one exercise to each of the four suits (heart =leg raises, clubs = toe touches). The number on the card indicates how many times the exercise is performed. Then shuffle the deck and call out the cards, or give one card to each students and go around the room until everyone’s cards have been completed.

7. Avoid Hot Lava

Give small groups of students balloons and have them count how many times they can finger volley a balloon to one another without it touching the “hot lava” floor. Once they become adept, challenge them to lob the balloon without hands, using heads, elbows, and knees instead.

8. Sit Down and Sweat

Look up chair exercise routines online and lead students in these seated movements. Just make sure to have students pull their chairs out from their tables of desks.



Classroom Movement Ideas Infographic