Suitable for:
- 1 or more players
- Outdoor area or indoor area
- Range of physical literacy: Multi-movement
- Age appropriate: 3-7 years
Primary physical literacy skills: all types, creative movement
Make it happen
Pretend to play imaginary sports. Children can do this on their own or with a partner or a group e.g. playing tennis shots to each other.- The children will likely start on-the-spot to begin with and then gradually use more space as their confidence grows. Encourage them to really commit to acting out their mimes to help their bodies go through the same movement range as if doing it for real.
Some examples:
- Football (keepie-up, dribbling, passing, jumping to head ball, shoot at goal, celebrate scoring)
- Tennis (play a rally, high shots, low shots, forehand, backhand)
- Basketball (dribbling, passing, jumping, shooting)
- Cricket (batting, bowling, fielding)
- Swimming (using arms for; backstroke, breaststroke, front crawl, butterfly)
For younger children who may not be familiar with many sports or those struggling for ideas of what actions to do see Make it fun below.
We provide this list only as a guide of what parents/carers may wish to consider. Please also read our general guidelines on the Parents/Carers Information page.
- Each person needs enough space to be safely active on-the-spot and whilst moving around the area.
- Make sure the area is clear of obstructions in all directions (suggest other children are at least two arms lengths away). If there is limited space then players can take turns.
Please click on our headings below to help you make more of this activity and keep your children coming back to it over time
- Take it in turns for a partner or an adult to be a Commentator on their sports event (or they can commentate themselves as they perform it).
- Make an action film! Take it in turns to be an actor and a director (the director narrates the scene and the actor performs the movements).
- You can start younger children off by acting out a scene they know well from a favourite film or TV programme and then introduce new movements one by one that they can repeat easily.
- Leaper’s theme: Pretend to follow Bouncy the rabbit in and out of hedges, through a maze of rabbit holes and along a cabbage patch.
Please also read our general guidelines on the Parents/Carers Information page.
- Can anyone guess what the sport or action scene is that’s being mimed?
- How many different sports can be mimed in 30 seconds?
- How many shots/passes can be performed in a rally in 20 seconds?
- Run a competition for the most imaginative mime.
- Take turns to perform a different mime to the one that went before – how long can they go before they run out of ideas or repeat one?
Please also read our general guidelines on the Parents/Carers Information page.
- Always make sure whatever equipment you are using is safe and appropriate for that use.
- Think of how to include an object in the mime in an imaginary way.
Some ideas: pretend a ball or small object is: very heavy, made of jelly, very hot, very light.
- Pick a random object – what could you pretend it is?
Some ideas: an empty kitchen roll tube could act as: a bat, a racquet, a baton, a bar with weights on, a javelin, a fishing rod, a hockey stick; a t-shirt could be a fishing net, a flag, a matador’s cape, etc.
Please also read our general guidelines on the Parents/Carers Information page.
- Increase the frequency and speed of the movement (e.g. if playing tennis then imagine the rally is speeding up or the player needs to move quicker to the back and front of the court).
- Include as many different body positions for each mime as is appropriate e.g. reaching high, reaching low, moving backwards/forwards/side to side, crouching, lying down, rolling sideways, crawling, running, jumping, etc.
Please also read our general guidelines on the Parents/Carers Information page.
Printable PDF download here.
Use of the resources
This move to improve resource is provided as a guideline only for parents and carers who wish to supervise physical activities for their children. Users of this resource have a duty of care to ensure the safety of their participants. We do not endorse the use of any content in this resource that a user feels may present a risk to the safety or well being of the children in their care.
