Quick Sticks

The facilitator says the name of a GymZOOnasium exercise.  All the participants do their best to remember and start doing that exercise as quickly as they can.

The participants continue doing that exercise until the facilitator says the name of the next exercise to do.

Musical Statues

Play some music and have the participants dance to the music.  Press ‘pause’ and name a GymZOOnasium exercise.

The first participant to start doing that exercise earns a point.  All the participants keep doing that exercise until you start the music again.  Repeat until someone achieves a certain number of points to win the game.

Simon Says

The same as the usual Simon Says game, but using the GymZOOnasium exercises.  E.g. “Simon says… do three lizard lifts” or “Simon says… freeze like a fish”.

Try to catch participants out by intermittently giving an instruction without the “Simon says” preface, or by you doing a different exercise to the one you instruct them to do.

Lucky Dip

Put GymZOOnasium flashcards or exercise names into a lucky dip container.  Draw one out and have the children do that exercise as well as they can for 1 minute. 

Sequences

Challenge students to recall and perform movement sequences (e.g. do 6 lion lunges, 4 goanna climbs and then downward dog while you count to 12).

This is very beneficial for improving memory, and motor planning and sequencing ability.  You can provide the list verbally; or written (but have them turn over the page before they start the exercises). 

Dice roll

For a fun variation of Sequences you can use GymZOOnasium flashcards (or exercise names) and a dice.  Without looking, select a flashcard and roll the dice.

Participants do the chosen exercise for the number of seconds they’ve rolled (e.g. rolling a 1 = 10 seconds, 2 = 20 seconds, 3 = 30 seconds and so on).

Progressively increase the number of cards selected and dice rolled, for the children to recall and perform a sequence of exercises.

E.g. If you selected the Kangaroo Jump flashcard and rolled a 2, then selected the Fish Freeze flashcard and rolled a 5, participants would need to remember the exercises and numbers, and would do Kangaroo Jump for 20 seconds and then Fish Freeze for 50 seconds.

Guess the Animal

One participant chooses a GymZOOnasium animal and gives the class 3 clues about that animal (e.g. it’s nocturnal, furry and eats eucalyptus leaves).

Once the class guesses the animal correctly they all do that animal exercise together (e.g. for 30-60 seconds).  Then the person who guessed correctly gets to choose the next animal.

GymZOOlympics Team Challenge

See GymZOOlympics for instructions. 

Arrange students into teams of four and challenge them to do the GymZOOlympics (eight exercise assessments) as a team.  Each team needs to decide which participant from their team will complete each of the assessment exercises.

One representative from each team will participate in each exercise, with teams needing to make sure that each student completes two of the exercises.  The team’s results will be recorded on one ‘My Achievements Handout’.  Instruct students to analyse their team members’ unique strengths to plan a strategy for achieving the best possible outcome for their team.