Plan your activities for a Primary School Sports Day

In the second of our Sports Day blogs for this year, ex-Primary School teacher, Jacqui Dalton, gave us some tips on the best  school sports day games to help your day run smoothly.

Run the ‘classic’ races…

The oldies are often the best! These are the races that we all remember from our primary school days and children still enjoy them today. It’s always worth running the classic egg and spoon race and sack race as simple competitive fund for children.

Other simple race ideas

Interspersing your ‘classic’ events with some other races can make it more enjoyable and memorable. Here are some ideas:

• Band race – this isn’t dressing up as rock stars (though that is an idea you could adopt if you’re feeling especially creative!) but, rather, uses coloured team bands. Lay the bands out along the track (e.g. 6 per runner). The children run to the first one and feed their arm through so that they are ‘wearing’ it, they then run to the next one and do the same thing. They will repeat this until they have collected all of the bands in their lane and then run as fast as they can to the finish line.
• Hurdle race – simple and easy. Create a line of low hurdles and race over them
• ‘Space hopper’ style race using jumping balls.
• Skipping rope race – requires a lot of coordination but really good fun!
• ‘Balance a beanbag on your head’ race.
• ‘Balance a quoit on your head’ race.

You could also hold a throwing event using foam javelins and/or tennis balls and see who can throw it the furthest.

Creating the perfect obstacle race

Who doesn’t love the obstacle race? The main aim here is to have as much fun as possible.

You may choose to give your obstacle race a theme e.g. holidays/the seaside. For this, the children could do some of the following:

• run to a pair of sunglasses/arm bands/inflatable rings and put them on
• run to a sun hat/Hawaiian shirt/lei/flower garland and put that on
• put on a snorkel and mask, flippers or both
• pick up a bucket and spade and run to the end

Alternatively, you could just use a selection of the equipment from the individual races and allow them to show off different skills such as speed, balance and co-ordination all in one race! For example, they could go through a hula hoop, balance a ball on a racket, jump over a hurdle, balance a beanbag on their head, collect a team band and put it on, balance a bean bag or quoit on their head and/or use the eggs and spoons, sacks or skipping ropes to the finish line.

Most of all, it needs to be enjoyable as well as challenging. Let the children show off their skills.

For more equipment and ideas for Sports Day visit the dedicated page here.

Author: Jacqui Dalton

About: Jacqui was a primary school teacher for 18 years, a member of SLT and led a variety of subjects. She planned and delivered weekly P.E. lessons across KS1 and KS2 throughout her career as a teacher.

Jacqui is also one of the Education Specialists on the EuHu team, our teacher platform, containing a variety of curriculum content, including P.E. lessons. Find out more here https://www.euhu.co.uk/physical-education