Homeschool PE: Jumping Rope

The girls have been transitioning into some new passions lately: fairy tales, particularly princess stories, for Syd, and for Willow--dragons, Garfield, and board games of all sorts. Money math and Ancient Egypt, while still being explored somewhat, are less all-consuming now, the girls haven't read a Rainbow Magic book in weeks, and they've both rediscovered their gigantic collection of those little Safari Ltd. animal toys and play with them for hours daily. With my encouragement, both kids have been willing to start trying out nature journaling a couple of days a week and math journaling most days. Willow is back into chess, and she recently asked if I could request more dinosaur books from the library--whew!

Another new-ish passion: jumping rope:


Willow was the instigator on this one, but I also LOVE taking turns with her, as jumping rope is an excellent cardio activity, and Sydney--


--well, Sydney is NOT going to stop until she gets it.

Another thing that I love about homeschooling is that an area of interest isn't just one academic field here--instead, it's everything. That jump rope may be an excellent cardio, large muscle conditioning, hand-body coordination tool--

--but it's a stepping-off point for memorizing jump rope rhymes, and learning jump rope games played around the world, and me figuring out how to make/procure a bigger double-dutch rope so that we can do Cinderella Dressed in Yella. That jump rope is also ROPE, and with rope, and hours to explore it, amazing things can be discovered, such as how to finally make use of the playground's zip line, which is too high up for a little kid to reach:

Also at the park during this time were not only a pesky kid that the girls played with for a while, grew weary of, and then practiced how to gently fend off (ah, the life lessons learned on the playground!), but also, amazingly by coincidence, a group of four older boys, perhaps around age 13 or so, who also had rope. They were tying a loop into one end of this rope, tossing it around the top beam of the swing set, and then taking turns stepping into the rope and being pulled all the way up to the top beam by the other three boys. My girls watched them, entranced and highly impressed.

And at the hardware store later that evening, shopping for concrete, tile grout, and a new oven, I bought the girls their own nice, loooong length of rope, a metal pulley to fit the rope, and a carabiner to fit the pulley. Let the games begin!