Warm-up exercises for kids: a five-minute routine

A good warm-up for kids does three things in order: gets the legs moving gently, wakes up the arms and shoulders, then brings the heart rate up. The hard part is never knowing the exercises — it is getting a class of eight-year-olds to actually do them instead of waving one arm in the general direction. Here each exercise is a one-minute game the webcam scores, so the kid who does the move properly is the one whose ninja gets somewhere.

The routine

1. Minute 1 — march, knees up. Bamboo Climb: march on the spot lifting the knees high, and the ninja climbs the bamboo. The gentlest start for legs and hips.
2. Minute 2 — arms and shoulders. Kite Wings: flap both arms like wings to fly over the peaks, dip a wing to glide. Big swings from the shoulder.
3. Minute 3 — stretch tall, curl small. Big and Small: stretch up as tall as you can on BIG, curl down to the floor on SMALL. A whole-body stretch with a squat in it.
4. Minute 4 — balance. Crane Stance: stand on one leg like a crane, hold still, then hop to the next stone. Ankles, knees and focus.
5. Minute 5 — jump. Jump & Duck: jump the bamboo bundles, duck the swinging poles. Heart rate up, ready for the lesson.

Run it on Rookie for the youngest — it is built to be very forgiving for a four-year-old — and on Pro, Legend or Master for older kids, where the same moves come faster and ask for more. Every rank is free. Points are never deducted, so a child who wobbles off one leg in minute four just carries on.

For a PE teacher: laptop on the desk, webcam facing the front of the room, game on the projector. One or two kids play each minute — two players share one score, each on their own rank — while the rest of the class does the same move along with them, and you rotate who stands in front of the camera. Nothing to log into, nothing to install, and the camera image is processed inside the browser and never uploaded or stored. After the lesson, the same idea in reverse is a calm-down with breathing.