Get beach ready with this fun beach ball workout!

This workout brings me back to my teacher days. Who are my teachers in the house? Thumb-ball anyone?

This was one of my go to review games with my middle school students. For each unit I had a soccer ball with different questions in each shape (a standard soccer ball has 12 pentagons, 20 hexagons). Now that I’m a busy mom, coming up with 32 questions and painstakingly writing them all on a soccer ball seems insane to me but there is a simpler option. Enter the beach ball, only 6 panels to fill but you can break the panels up in the more sections if you want.

So here’s how it works:

Supplies:

Beach Ball
Permanent marker
Some workout buddies (young and old)

Pep work: On the ball write the following (2 per panel, spread out evenly)

10 squats
10 sumo squats
10 pushups
10 downward dog pushups
30 second plank
10 SpiderMan planks
10 Mountain climbers
10 Marching bridges
20 alternating lunges (lateral;10 each side)
20 alternating lunges (forward;10 each side)
20 alternating lunges (reverse;10 each side)
15 second side plank (each side)

The possibilities are endless, you can split the panels in 3 or 4 to add any exercises you want. I’m just keeping it simple here.

How to play:

Get some good tunes going.
Set a timer for however long you want to workout: 10, 20, 30 min…
Stand in a circle.
Toss the ball to one person in the circle.
Everyone completes whichever exercise is closest to where their right thumb is pointing when they catch it.
Then they toss to another person.
Continue in this way until the timer runs out.

Bonus: This “thumb ball” can be used for anything in addition to the aforementioned Earth Science review game and fun workouts…

Communication with questions like: What kinds of things make you feel happy? How does somebody who is sad act?
Icebreaker with questions like: Tell me something about your best friend. What’s your favorite color? What’s your favorite food?
Math problems like simple addition/subtraction and multiplication/division.
Or even just simple number or letter recognition.