Discussion Thread: Elementary School Gym Games

image of a children's gym class in which all the kids are seated under a parachute, labeled BEST DAY OF GYM CLASS

Recently, Kenny Blogginz and I were recalling the parachute game in elementary school gym class — we're all UNDER the parachute! now we're all ON the parachute! — and how we both thought that it was unique to our school because the gym teacher had just found some old parachute lying around and made up inexplicably weird games with it, and how surprised we were to find out it was A Thing.

From there, we reminisced (often cringingly, since neither of us was exactly a gym class star) about the rope climb, and how no one ever taught us to shimmy up the rope like it was an innate human instinct and how we never understood how to do it and would just dangle at the bottom limply, lol, and about the dreaded dodgeball, and basketball sprints, and jump-rope stations. We laughed at how many of these seemingly random games that seemed surely to be the products of our gym teachers' (lack of) imagination were actually super common gym class games for American (and often not-American, as Iain has confirmed) kids.

About the only game I remember really liking was four-square, probably because it was one of the only regular elementary gym class games at which I had even the slightest proficiency.

Anyway! What gym class games do you remember? Which ones did you like? Which ones did you dread? Did YOU play with a rainbow parachute? DO TELL!

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