My friend Esther is leading the charge as we start a homeschool gym class with about 12 kids.  We had our first meeting last Friday, and the boys had a great time playing soccer skill games.  We started with a warm up and then two 'laps' around the field we were using.

     DH has given us a great idea to incorporate dynamic warm up exerices instead of the traditional "warm up" that most of us are used to from gym class.  Dynamic warm up exercises increase your body temperature and warm up the muscles without the potential bad-effects of warm up stretches.  I decided to post the link to the Youtube.com video showing a variety of warm up exercises that he recommended:

     DH suggested the following order for the warm ups, from lightest intensity to hardest intensity:

Arm Circles (forward/ back, little/big)
Walking butt kicks
Fast butt kicks
Walking hi knees
Fast hi Knees
Hi Knees with skip
Toe Walking
Heel Walking
Walking Lunges
Reverse Walking Lunges
Single Leg Deadlift Walk
Stiff Leg Raise and Rotation
Grapevine (l/r)
Side lunges/ lateral shuffle (l/r)

     He also sent me to this site at Center For Athletes which explains why you want to do a dynamic warm up vs. a static stretching-style warm up.