Homeschooling Notes: Kidfit

On making little barbells

In addition to my “American Folk Tales” class at the Mountaineer Homeschool Hub I also taught a gym class, “Kidfit,” that mixed exercise, games, and free play.

For the exercise part I went over some barbell and kettlebell exercises of the kind we do at Crossfit Morgantown (which also has its own kids camp that my children got a lot out of). Nothing too complicated — back squats, front squats, overhead squats, deadlifts, and farmer’s carry.

The problem was finding a way to make a cheap and relatively light barbell for a bunch of 4- to 7-year-olds. My solution was to buy some lengths of ½ inch PVC pipe. I cut each length down to 3-feet. I also bought ½ inch end caps, two for each pipe. (I linked to Amazon but you can get them at Lowe’s or Home Depot or wherever.)

I used some E6000 adhesive to put one cap on each pipe. When that was dried, I stuffed each pipe with paver’s sand. It took me longer than I’d hoped as the sand tended to clog my funnels and I wound up shoving it in by hand. My son and daughter helped. Once each pipe was full of sand, I glued on the second cap.

I picked 1/2 inch mostly thinking about what was a comfortable grip for little hands, but the resulting weight — about 5 pounds I guess — was light for most of them. Still, it was enough to give them some feel for the exercises. For the littlest kids — like my 3-year-old daughter — it was probably as much weight as they could handle while learning form. The bigger and more athletic kids could go heavier. So I’m planning to do the same thing with some ¾ or 1-inch PVC pipes to give more weight options. I’ll probably spray paint them different colors, so they can know at a glance “I’m ready for red bar or green bar.”

There may actually be some kid’s barbells and weights out there, but I like having something self-contained, so we don’t mess around with plates and clamps. Plus all this can be done pretty cheap — all you need is PVC and some filler, like sand or gravel. You can dig dirt out of your yard if necessary.

For kettlebells: My own kids are experienced with real ones, and the boy can deadlift 26 pounds easily. But I was wary of using hard and heavy iron with a large group of kids who I don’t know as well. I opted for buying some soft-sand kettlebells like these ones.

I went for 5 pounds and 10 pounds. For farmer’s carry, the littlest kids in the class could just barely manage a five pounder in each hand. The bigger and stronger ones could do a pair of tens pretty easy. I also had them do a kind of bucket brigade exercise where they passed different weights of kettlebell around in a circle. The little ones could barely do it with the 5’s, with the 10s they couldn’t really lift it above hang level but that just meant the bigger kids had to bend down to meet them halfway.

Both weights are pretty light for deadlifts, even for little kids, but I’m focusing on getting them to not round their backs before I try anything heavier.

To encourage teamwork, one day I threaded the PVC barbell through the 2-4 kettlebells and had them work in teams of two to carry it across the room and back. Height differences made this one tricky!

They all took to the animal movements — bear crawl, duck walk, and crab walk. And after some initial trepidation they all learned to do wall-walks. One girl was proud enough of her skills to start showing it off at home and got pretty good at it.

For a treat one day, I sat on a little dolly with a rope tied about my middle and had the kids pull me around. “Pulling Mr. Jason” was a fun novelty for them and good exercise, though it sure left some rope burns around my love handles.

For games, we went with classic stuff like “hot potato” and “duck, duck, goose” — the latter one of my few clear memories from my own preschool days. Those were definitely hits, though with “hot potato” you have to keep some of the more excitable boys from chucking it like a football. An older girl sometimes tried to do slightly more complex things like “red light, green light” or “sharks and minnows,” but the younger kids had trouble following the rules, so it might be a while before the whole group gets on board with that.

As for all else, the point of this is socialization for homeschooled kids, so now and again I just let them run about for a while and figure out what to do on their own. If a game of tag or ball spontaneously breaks out there’s not point squashing it.

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