Day 168: Field Day!

Today was Field Day, every elementary school student's favorite day in the spring.  Really.  Gym class activities for half a day, popsicles, and a chance to be silly with your friends?  Who DOESN'T like Field Day?

Games were planned, volunteers were gathered, sunblock applied, and insect repellent sprayed on.

And.

Then.

It.

Rained.

When I arrived at school this morning, the weather was a fine mist of rain.  This mist proceeded to get heavier and heavier as the time for student arrival loomed.  Fields primed for the day were soggy and muddy. 

Enter the announcement saying that Field Day would not be rescheduled because of the forecast.  (We are supposed to have thunderstorms all week long.)

So what did we do?  Volunteers were ready.  Students were ready.  Staff was ready (with a back-up plan, of course!). 

Well...

...We had it inside. 

"Inside!?!" you gasp.

"With 670-plus students?!?" you ask. 

Yes.

Here's how we managed: 
**Grades 3-5 had their activities in the morning while grades 1-2 watched a movie in the cafeteria.  (Kindergarten had their own field day last week.)  Stations were set up in various classrooms and common areas among the third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade hallways.  Those classes rotated stations for an hour and a half, until the lunch rotations started.
**After the lunch rotations, the first- and second-grade classrooms became the scene of various activities, with the common area near the library serving as yet another station.  The older grades watched the movie in the cafeteria. 
**Each classroom hosted stations for the 11 classes to rotate through.  We started in our own rooms and rotated to the left until we reached our own rooms again.  (My classroom was turned into a throw/toss station.  The children had three little stations where they had to make a basket, throw rings onto a moving target, and throw rings onto a giant inflatable dinosaur.)
**Some of the stations we visited: jump ropes, scooters, relay races, parachute games, volleyball, bowling for cones, memory relays, and two-person board walking.  Our final station was a class picture.

In all we had a fun day with very few injuries, no sunburn, and no insect bites.  (However, there were a few welts from jump ropes gone wild and one finger run over by a scooter.  No worries; the children are fine.) 

By the end of the day, the students were tired and ready for naps.  So was I!