Additional menu

The PE Specialist

Awesome Resources for Physical Education Teachers

Daily Warmup Routine
You are here: Home / Blog / Daily Warmup Routine

Daily Warmup Routine

What’s Up Phys Ed Fam!

Today I want to share with you my daily warm-up and stretching routine that I use at the beginning of class with my students.

I do this with my students from 1st grade through 5th grade (we have 50 minute classes).

  • My Kindergarten classes are super short (25 minutes), so we don’t have time for anything other than a quick 1-2 minute jog/walk/skip/slide around the outside lines of the gym.

Warmup or Instant Activity

We start with a quick warm-up or instant activity for the first 2 minutes.  We do change this up throughout the year to keep it interesting.

I’ve covered a ton of specific warm-up activities that you can do in another post (Awesome Warmup Activities) so I won’t go into a ton of detail, but check out the post if your interested in specific instant activities.

I also always explain to the kids why we do this at the beginning of the year

Home Base Spots

After they finish with the instant activity they go to our Home Base Spots.

Here’s a video explaining the Home Base Spots:

  • For my roster template mentioned in the video above head over to the Home Base Spots Blog Post.

Daily Stretching Routine

Once we are at our Home Base Spots I lead students through a few stretches while I am taking attendance.

You can see the stretching routine I use and the poster I created as a visual for students in the video below: 

Here’s a link to the Good Sport Code Poster that I mentioned in the video.

After a few weeks in this routine with my 3rd – 5th grade students I will pick a volunteer student to lead the stretches as a way to allow the class to have some independence and responsibility and give one student a chance to practice leading the class. 

I give the warmup leader a laminated PDF of the poster to use as a cheat sheet when they are leading the class.  I actually got this idea from a teacher who bought the poster and did the same thing with their own students.

If you’d like to purchase the Daily Warmup Poster you can click the link below to check it out on TPT (or members can download it in the membership area after logging in):

Check out the Daily Warmup Poster

Explaining “The Why Behind the Warmup”

As a student I can vividly remember feeling a disdain any time I was forced to do something in school that I didn’t see the purpose of.  I will never forget one of my teachers in high school who would always explain before every lesson the useful things we would be able to do with the information that we would learn that day.  It was so motivating for me to know that I wasn’t just doing busy work, but that it would actually be helpful for my future success.

I always try to explain “The Why” behind everything we do in my classes to students, it will help them be more motivated to actually put 100% of their effort into the task or activity that you’re asking them to do.

Check out the video below for an example during our 2nd week of school: 

Sharing Good Things

After we get into the routine of our Daily Warmup, I let kids share “Good Things” while we are getting stretched out.  This is a routine that I started after going through a training called Capturing Kids Hearts in my school district.

While I was already hearing from kids randomly about good things going on in their lives, I really like having it as a set routine and the kids enjoy getting to share what’s going on.

It’s a simple and easy way to create connections with your students, you can see an example of how I do it in the video below:

Virtual Daily Warmup

During COVID times when I was teaching Virtual, I wanted to keep a similar routine to our in person days and virtual days as much as possible, so I created this Daily Warmup Video for my kids to complete on our virtual days.  If you’re doing E-Learning or teaching virtual you might be able to use it as well, check it out below:

  • How Did You Make This Video?
    • For all my videos I use an editing program called Final Cut Pro X (Mac only), although if your starting out I would recommend using iMovie for widescreen or trying out clips for square videos https://www.thepespecialist.com/clips/
    • You can consult Dr. Google for whatever editing program you decide to use and find plenty of tutorials specific to the program your using and the effect you want to use (for example timers or progress bars like you see in this video)

That’s It!

I’ve found that providing a good routine really helps me get my class started quickly and without wasting any time.

Hope that was helpful and as always…

Have Fun and Teach On!

Reader Interactions

Comments

    • Sorry Monica we won’t be able to make that work.

      Best bet is to try and book us 6 months to 1 year in advance

      Thanks!

      Reply

  4. I am getting ready to start my volleyball unit. 3-5. Do you have any activities for the skills used in volleyball.
    Thanks,

    (1st year PE teacher:)

    Reply

    • Hey Erica,

      Thanks for reaching out!

      We currently don’t have any Volleyball resources, it’s something on our “to-do” list.

      Instead we usually focus on 4 Square, Spikeball, or GaGa Ball for our striking with hands lessons.

      Hope this helps!

      Reply

    • Hey Kristina,

      Thanks for reaching out! We were able to access the links.

      Can you send us a screenshot of what you’re seeing so we can troubleshoot the issue from our end?

      Send to [email protected]

      Thank you!

      Reply

  9. I teach at a school with 1300 students. We see 600 a day. Close to 100 a class. I would love tips or tricks on different warm ups for large class sizes

    Reply

  10. I am loving all your info and ideas. Such a big help. I am hoping gas and food prices go down so I can become a paid member. Valuable stuff here.

    Reply

    • Hey Lisa!

      Thanks for reaching out! Glad you’re enjoying the resources!

      Totally understand! Hopefully you are join up soon!

      Reply

  11. Emailed last week about my school district paying for my membership. My name is John Murphy and I work for new Rochelle city school District in new Rochelle New York. Could someone please respond back to me and let me know? I never got any information.

    Reply

    • Hey John,

      We emailed you back and responded to your post here.

      We will email you the information again.

      Be on the lookout in you SPAM folder as well.

      Reply

  12. Good morning. I believe my school district in new Rochelle New York paid for my membership. Did you guys receive anything from us? Please let me know as soon as possible.

    Reply

    • Hey John!

      We emailed you back on November 24th with your sign up info for the membership.

      Have you not received the email? If not let us know, and we can send it again!

      Have a great day!

      Reply

  13. I am currently about two weeks into my first time being a Physical Education Teacher and boy am I happy that I stumbled on your website and your YouTube videos as well. I have been very organized thanks to you, God Bless!

    Reply

    • Laura! We are glad you found us as well! We have tons of teaching tips! Hope you find what you need! Feel free to reach out if you have any questions along the way!

      Reply

  15. Hi Ben,
    All of your materials are awesome! I see that you have your stretching routine posters. Do you have a poster for the virtual warm-up, the one starting with jumping jacks?

    Thanks,
    Lindsey

    Reply

  18. I just wanted to write and say thank you for all this information. The school I teach at now has the classroom teachers, teaching PE, I am a little familiar but all the information you have provided will help me this school year.

    Reply

    • Bummer that you don’t have a certified PE Teacher at your school, but I’m glad it’s been helpful for you!

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *