Flashback Friday

It's time for Flashback Friday again. Linda always come up with fun prompts that get me to thinking about my childhood. This week our flashback is about physical fitness. Here are some of the questions she asked us to consider:

Was physical fitness a focus in school when you were growing up? Did you have P.E. in elementary school or just recess? Was recess organized games or just free playtime? What are your memories of P.E. in junior high/middle school and high school? What did your "gym suits" or "dress out" clothes look like? Was P.E. a favorite or dreaded subject? Did your school do the Presidential Physical Fitness Program? How did you do with that? Did you take the minimum amount of P.E. required or did you take more?

My flashback:
We had both recess and PE in elementary school. For recess we just played around on the playground. I was always scared to try to hang upside down on the monkey bars. We also had a single bar that the girls would put one leg over and flip around and around. Some of them could do it so fast! I could never do that either. I remember sitting under a tree, playing "house" with some friends, during recess. The tree had these things it shed, and we would dig holes and pretend we were cooking the things that fell off the tree.

The first thing I think of when I think of elementary PE is square dancing. For several years, a couple would come to our school for a week (or maybe two) during PE class. The man was a square dancing caller and we learned how to square dance. Then we would have a program at night to square dance and the parents would come watch. I always thought it was fun! Another elementary PE activity I remember is going outside to play kick ball. Also, we had a big cement slab outside of our building. We each had a colored dot where we stood to do our stretching. I never did like running!

In middle school we could choose PE or athletics in 7th and 8th grade. I never wanted to play sports so I would want to be in PE. However, the time period slot for PE conflicted with another class I was in, my language arts class. So one year I was forced to be in athletics. I did some of the workouts with them, and I remember going to the nurse with a girl one time because her blood sugar got too low.

In high school I believe we had to have a 1.5 PE credits. I took PE class for part of that. Then I ended up doing tennis to get the other half of my credit. It makes us laugh today because I didn't have any skill or knowledge of the game (and still don't). But I got my credit for it!

One fond memory I have from college is PE for Elementary Teachers class. We learned to juggle and taught some school children how to juggle with scarves. And now Caleb came home this week telling me he is learning to juggle in PE. We have some scarves and bean bags for him to practice with at home.

Have a day of blessings!