Being a good sport about P.E.

Every now and then I've had people ask me what homeschoolers do for sports. That's one of those questions I usually have to refer to someone else, because we just aren't really a sports family. I know that homeschoolers can and are involved in sports. After all, Tim Tebow was homeschooled, as well as some other famous athletes. I'd say probably half of the homeschooled kids that I know play sports. I just don't really know where. I suppose I could ask them, but so far I haven't really needed to know. The only person in our family who even watches sports is my husband who watches an occasional football game. He's the only one in our family who watches the Superbowl. In contrast, my big night is Election Night. That's when I buy myself some snacks and stay up late all night to watch the election results come in. It's like a Superbowl party all by myself except the results actually matter.

Now I'm not against sports. We did give it a try once, with our oldest son. He played on a baseball team for a season a few years ago. I found it exhausting trying to make it to all the games and practices just to watch him stand out in the field for hours. The only interesting thing that ever happened was when a stray baseball knocked out someone's windshield. He never hit the ball once and by the time the season was over had lost all interest in baseball. I guess sports just aren't our thing.

But now with two kids in high school, I've got transcripts to think about. One way or the other, I needed to figure out something for P.E. credits. We can't afford to enroll them in dance or karate lessons, so my husband and I came up with our own P.E. program that we implemented last week--our first week of school.

Monday we did ballet lessons, which is an obvious choice for me since I have a background in ballet. We hauled the kitchen chairs into the living room to hold onto in lieu of a barre. I donned my leotard and ballet slippers and popped in my ballet exercise music and we had ourselves a ballet lesson. Of course, our living room isn't quite as roomy as a ballet studio would be, so it was kind of tricky keeping the kids from kicking the couch. Although I am still practically in tip-top shape from 12 years of ballet lessons, I cut the lesson a little short for our first time because I didn't want to overwork the kids. Besides, I almost peed my pants when I was doing jumps.

Tuesday we did weight training, under my husband's direction. We all took turns with the dumbbells and did push-ups. We have these dandy little dumbbells with flat weights that slip onto a bar and then are secured with a large nut on the end. This makes it easy to adjust them from 5 lbs. all the way to 32 lbs. Each child was able to customize the weights to meet their own needs. I personally found that my performance was best when I took the flat discs off entirely and just lifted the bar.

By Wednesday I was feeling muscles that I didn't remember I had. We took a small break from the intense workouts and just did stretches that day. These are my favorite exercises, because I've done these regularly my whole life and I can still do them. My favorite stretch is to sit on the floor with my legs to the side and touch my forehead to the floor. The reason it's my favorite is because my kids can't do it and I can. That makes me feel very good about myself.

On Thursday we rested. Next week co-op starts up again and they'll be playing basketball and volleyball with the other homeschool kids, but this week we just took the day off. Besides, I was still in pain from showing off how I could touch my forehead to the floor.

Friday we did our aerobic training. My husband I marked out a mile for the kids to run, and I decided to run it with them so they'd know where they were going. I told them to pace themselves and that it was okay to slow down to a walk if they needed to. I will admit that I the last one back to the house, but I'm okay with that. You see, a good friend helped me understand that my kids didn't "beat" me home at all. Instead, I was just being a good mother by making sure they all arrived home safely, checking to make sure they didn't drop anything along the way, helping to build my children's self-confidence, and of course, taking time to enjoy the beautiful day.

So now we are into our second week of school. I think I put on four pounds last week with all the muscle I've gained. I'm pretty proud of myself. Oh, and my kids, too, of course.