We haven't had a Field Day at our school in about 2 years. Parents just don't want to help out and the PTO has struggled financially for about 2 years. It is so sad when parents don't want to help out the children in our school.

We recently had Field Day for our K to 8th school and we included the ELC (3 & 4yo's) and the Pre-K (4 & 5 yo's). Ours runs most of the day, 10AM until 2:30. We divide into Red, White and Blue groups, with each color having several teams of 10 or 12 per team. Each team has an 8th grade leader and the remaining members are from each class 7th grade down to ELC. We usually have siblings on the same team. We keep score, awarding 3 to 1st place, 2 for 2nd and 1 for 3rd. At the end of the day, all of the teams are added up by color and we announce which team came in first. Blue seems to win first every year.

The dress your captain game was very popular. The 8th grade captain stood at one end and the rest of the team had a box of clothing and accessory items, enough for eavery team member to have an item to run down to their captain. Most of the items came from Goodwill. We had shoes or slippers, pants or a skirt, a shirt, jacket, hat, sunglasses, purse/basket or backpack and a string of beads. The captain that got dressed the quickest and ran to the other end to undress the quickest and had each member of their team sitting down won.

The 2 liter water bottle fill up was fun too. The 8th grade captain sat in a chair while the rest of the team carried a cup full of water to them to try and fill up a 2lt bottle the fastes without spilling it on their captain.

I think that you will find that 1/2 a day is all that is needed for holding a field day event.

We have field day once a year-- ours is next month. It's run during school by our gym teacher and many volunteers-- we have 10 stations set-up including 1 water/popsicle station where the kids stop and get a drink of water and a sweet treat. Each station is approximately 15 minutes-- some are relays... 1 is a frog station-- where a frog gets flipped into a bucket of water--- 1 is football throw-- and several others-- all goal oriented to be fun and a little excercise-- we do not keep score--it's just fun-- and we have 1/2 the school is the morning-- AMK-2 and PMK and 3-5 in the afternoon-- Works out great and it's a lot of fun... And since this is a yearly event- we sold T-shirts that say Field Day on them that the kids can wear each year on this cool day!

Our school is a K through 4th and we actually separate the Kindergarten from the rest of the school by holding two different Field Days.

For the younger group we have the following stations:

- Soccer Kick (with a goal/goalies (volunteers))

- Bouncy Ball

- Beanbag Pitch

- Parrachute

- Popsicles

and a few others.

For the bigger kids we have the following:

- Parrachute

- Fastest Pitch (getting the police department to come out for the day with their radar system that indicates the speed)

- Fastest Kick (using the handheld radar)

- Egg relay (using plastic golf balls instead of eggs)

- Sponge relay (must fill a bucket to a certain level

- Frizbee throw (with point targets)

- Tatoos (used to be face painting but switched)

- Bouncy Ball relay

In addition, last year, we added tug-o-war. It was by far the station that the kids loved the most.

This year we are adding a potato sack relay

Another station that we are thinking about is crab soccer. As I understand it you purchase this super-huge ball, the two teams spread themselves out in this huge circle area. 2 players start kicking and if the ball goes out of the area, last one to kick it gets a point. Need to have numerous judges though. If you had large goals that would work as well, but you would want to maintain a small area since the kids are crab walking/kicking.

Another idea I had was a free throw relay. Have a volunteer with a counter per each basket. Set up one team at one basket, another at a second one, etc. Use a stopwatch to give the team 5 minutes or so. Most points win.

Also, last year I advocated for purchasing a Mascot costume for the school. It met much resistance, but when I ran a new fundraiser specifically for this purpose, I got the groups buy-in and was able to make the costume a reality. So now at all of our events, and especially Field Day, we have our mascot walking around, high five-ing the kids. It's a great spirit boost to see the mascot that the kids voted for and named to be sharing the events with the kids.

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Here's an important point for discussion...

In years past the Principal has always been against keeping any sort of score. I think this is just one of those looney left ideas that elementary school kids shouldn't win or lose, or possibly that you might have parents complaining when their kid comes home upset that they lost. Now I'm not even talking about rewarding the "winning" team/teams with prizes, just keeping score. Seems to me that if you make a class a team, that they will be cheering more if they are going against another team, which indicates that a form of score is being kept.

This year we are actually changing our Field Day so that instead of having one class go to one station and rotate all teams/classes so that again, only one team is at any station, we are going to have it so that more than one team is competing at the same station at the same time. Effectively against each other. Now my Principal still wants to not have us keep or inform on score, but in order to do certain stations, such as the freethrow station, you have to have score. Isn'e a score, such as the number of baskets, effectively the same thing as one team finishing before another?

~Harmony~, hopes this helps.

PresidentJim
Just wondering everyone elses thoughts on this topic.

We Are Getting Ready To Do Our Field Day In A Few Weeks....i Wanted To See If Any One Has Ideas That They Would Like To Share.

We Are Pk-4th Grade W/ A Little Over 1000 Students And We Have Two Days Set To Hold Our Field Day. We Are Not Sure If We Want To Do Full Day Or 1/2 Day What Do You Think?