Presidential Fitness Challenge

The President's Challenge

You may recall from your PE days gone by the Presidential Fitness program. You can use this program with your own students today as well.

The challenge is designed to motivate kids to get in the habit of regular exercise. The President’s Fitness Challenge website has lots of information available.  They even have patches and certificates for you to order that you can use as rewards for your child as they set and achieve their goals.

If you are not familiar with this program, here is a little information from their site:

The Physical Fitness Test recognizes students for their level of physical fitness in 5 events: curl-ups or partial curl-ups, shuttle run, endurance run/walk, pull-ups or right angle push-ups, and V-sit or sit and reach.

The Physical Fitness Test offers three awards for students who meet the program qualifications:

The Presidential Physical Fitness Award
This award recognizes students who achieve an outstanding level of physical fitness. Boys and girls who score at or above the 85th percentile (based on the 1985 School Population Fitness Survey) on all five events are eligible for this award.

The National Physical Fitness Award
Students who score above the 50th percentile on all five events – demonstrating a basic, yet challenging, level of physical fitness – are eligible for this award.

The Participant Physical Fitness Award
Students whose scores fall below the 50th percentile on one or more events receive this award for taking part in all five events of the Physical Fitness Test.

For competitive kids they might enjoy seeing how they rank in the national standings. For your non-competitive kids, or those just setting health goals, you might like them to just work to improve their own scores over the course of the program. Most of these activities you could conduct in your living room, basement or back yard.

Physical Education is often an area that homeschoolers struggle to consistently incorporate into their school day. This might be an easy way to add some structure to your activity and with some effort your kids can make some progress in their own health and fitness. Might not be bad for the teacher to join right in either . . .