My Kids/Presidential Fitness Challenge

As most of you know by now, I homeschool my children, ages 4 & 7.  However, they attend a homeschool physical education program each week for 3 hours. For the past 5 weeks they've been training for the Presidential Fitness Challenge. For those who are unfamiliar with that, the children partipate in 5 events that test their fitness level. The event are:

Sit ups or Partial curlups

Shuttle run

Sit & Reach (for flexibility)

1/4 mile run (for this age - goes up to a mile for older kids)

pull ups or push ups

Apparently only 1/3 of America's children even ATTEMPT the challenge and fewer yet attain the National or Presidential level of fitness.

My 7 yr old qualified for National Fitness level overall (2nd highest), with 3 events qualifying for the Presidential level. I'm very proud of her because she is not a sports-oriented kid and I know she has to work harder than most to achieve the same physical goals.

My 4 yr old actually qualified for National Fitness Level for SIX YEAR OLDS! They don't have a fitness level for younger than that! So, she really did great. And she had a bad cold on that day or I think she would have done even better. Plus she only trained for 2 weeks because that's when she started attending this class.

So they have both earned a certificate of completion and now I just have to order their badges.

Do they even still do this in school? I remember as a kid we HAD to do this challenge or we didn't pass Phys Ed. I guess phys ed has become less important in schools today due to lack of funding for it.  How sad.

Anyway, here are some pics. I'll have a couple of videos to upload if Gather will upload them today!