The coming of spring means that school field days are right around the corner. Track and field days are a popular event that the whole school community can enjoy.
Unfortunately, this type of day often involves only a few kids participating at a time. The overall activity level can be quite low.
This article lets you know about some other options for the standard field day. These ideas are designed to provide excitement, engagement, variety and a healthy dose of physical activity!
Getting Started
The first step is to form a field day committee that includes teachers, students, parents and interested community members.
The committee decides the format for the day, chooses activities and themes and helps to plan and organize the event.
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If your school has a student leadership group, draw on their expertise and energy to think up activities, help run events and make the day successful. If you don’t have a student leadership group – it’s a great time to start!
Students can also give you feedback about the previous year’s activities and tips on how to improve the day.
This pre-planning process ensures that lots of kids will participate in your field day activities and that the activities will be fun and include all abilities.
Field Day Formats
There is no set format that guarantees that your field day will work. Choose the format that best fits your situation and continue to develop it from year to year. Don’t be afraid to change what isn’t working!
For younger students, split them into teams with older leadership students as mentors. Each team can rotate through activity stations and work together to achieve success. Adult helpers can run each station, and other adults can “float” to help where needed.
For older students, offer a variety of events split into categories. Allow students to choose events. For example, in the morning, students could choose 2/4 track events and 1/3 field events as well as 2/5 “weird and wacky events.”
Use a hospital admitting wrist band (some health regions will print them for you) or use laminated cardstock that can be punched to show that students have completed their events.
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Themes and Activities
Many schools have been very successful using theme-based activity days.
For example, for a “Survivor” themed day, you could use a coconut as a shot put, participants could wear bandanas and teams could participate in a variety of Survivor-type events and team-building activities. Rather than highlight individual scores, arrange for points to go toward a team score.
Other potential themes include the Olympics, Harry Potter and medieval games.
If an older leadership group is involved, encourage them to invent active living activities. Examples include:
- Delivering newspapers on a child’s trike relay.
- A golf putting green.
- Beach ball volleyball.
- Other weird and wacky events (water balloon lacrosse, three-legged soccer, etc.).
Mix these events in with some of the more traditional events.
Other activity ideas for a whole group include:
- Water balloon volleyball: Make a playing court with any sort of net (rope, soccer goal, etc.). Give each team of eight to 10 people a bedsheet.
The goal is to use the bedsheet to launch your water balloon over the net to the other team. If the balloon breaks on your side, the other team gains a point.
- Slip and Slide of Peace: Find a large tarp (use a hay tarp if you are in rural Alberta). Run a sprinkler over it.
From time to time add a small quantitiy of dish soap. Have two teams take part in a tug-of-war on the tarp (save this activity for close to the end of the day!).
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The most important thing to remember is to design a field day that meets the needs of your school community.
Involve students in planning, organizing, running and wrapping up the day. Also, remember to gather feedback from students to improve the day for next year.
Make sure that your activities are inclusive, participatory and engaging.
Through a little advance planning, community involvement and carefully considering students’ needs, your field day can be a smashing success.
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Learn More
Athletics Alberta: Run, Jump, Throw
The Run, Jump, Throw program is a FUNdamentals program designed to help kids enjoy and benefit from track and field activities.
Fun Team Alberta
Fun Team Alberta has resources for leadership and for events such as a family triathlon.
Education World
Lesson plans and ideas for field day activities. Whole class events with promise include water balloon volleyball and the teacher sled race.
PE Central
PE Central has a searchable database of field day ideas.
