Warm-Up & Cool-Down Games

Here are some of my favourite Warm-up & Cool-down games to play with infants.

Sharks

Place a selection of hoops around your space (school yard/sports hall). Make sure there are enough hoops for all the children at the start. The children need to ‘swim’ around the space avoiding the hoops as they go. When you blow your whistle/shout shark, the children must jump into a hoop to ensure they don’t get eaten. As the game progresses, remove hoops each round to eliminate children until you have a winner.

Flush The Toilet 

This is a variation of Stuck In The Mud. Choose a few children to be ‘on’. If they catch a child, the child who is caught becomes stuck and must put their hand out. The other children who are still free must push down the stuck child’s hand (flush the toilet) in order to set them free again. This game is such a hit with the infants and has the added benefit of making sure they get rid of lots of energy!

Jockeys & Horses

This is a variation of Cat & Mouse. We simply call it Jockeys & Horses because of the area we are in. You could call it anything that is popular in your school and/or link it to your SESE topic.

Choose four children to be, in my case, the jockeys and have one child stand in each corner of the hall/yard. All the other children are horses and must avoid being caught by a jockey. If they are caught by a jockey they must go and stand in the jockey’s stable (corner) and the jockey with the most horses at the end of the game wins.

I have made a list of PE games that are suitable for warm-up and cool-down activities. They are not games I created, simply games I have found on the internet and have put them all together in one document. I have found it handy to have them all in the one place to make sure I don’t keep playing the same games each lesson. You can download them here.