In elementary school, we didn't have a field day, but we had something called water day (legit the best day ever). These were usually on the weeks leading up to the last day of school, and we would have water slides, water games, Popsicles, it was legit the funnest day in my life. I miss those days where school would celebrate you going to a new grade by letting us do fun activities
My school had something like that. It was sort of a mix of field day where doing activities got you points where you’d “buy” otter pops as rewards but there was a ton of water balloon ones. By the end of it there were rubber balloon ends everywhere and some tipped over sprinklers.
Oooo we had both! They just made up stuff all the time. One time we spent the whole day playing on a giant homemade slip and slide made with tarps and a water hose. One time fire trucks came and sprayed us. One time we had a giant grade wide volleyball tournament.
I have seen one kid complete the pacer test, in fifth grade. He vomited on the floor and collapsed right after. Ambulance came, I’ll never forget that though he lives in my head rent free
@@ChickenNugget-ev8zd it was a gaining consciousness kind of memory he may of gotten just very high but I distinctly remember everyone freaking out and waiting so long for him and then him puking and falling. You’re baller af for getting to 50 AND being the final girl in there! I would end up quitting so quickly from my lungs feeling like hot fire lolol
@gingperson6698 I feel like my middle school set the line to be much longer than the test instructions stated the two lines should be, then again my class that year were a bit taller than most of the other students at the school that year.
As a fellow 2000s kid, I can confirm the accuracy of the video. Probably the weirdest thing my elementary school PE class ever did though was that we had a unit where we literally just played Mario DDR for like a few weeks.
@@amandalovesthesims2 omg! I had a very similar experience. We had the unit for like a week before some boy fell backwards and broke his wrist. best week of my life
The big parachute thing was my single favorite thing in P.E. growing up. Idk why but it brings me so much joy. Also I will never forget the distinct *prang* of a rubber dodgeball and the PAIN of a slightly flat one hitting you in the face.
While my schools (elementary through high school) didn't have the rubber balls, we learned pretty fast that the pitchers on the baseball team can flatten those foam balls against the padded walls opposite to them by at minimum of high school.
This is making me realize how much I miss elementary school and how easy it was. Making friends, the school work, the activites. If only it was like that forever.
It is fascinating how distinct the smell and sound of rubber kickballs were, to the point I can instantaneously recall both despite not having seen one in over a decade
Scooter boards are about maneuvering your body, moonshoes are about steadiness, parachute is about teamwork - all also get you moving and developing your little muscles. These activities were genius bc these super important skills were presented to us as the best gym days.
@@trulyirrelevant17 🤣😅I think our gym teachers might've flipped their lid if we tried doing that. Probably becasue someone tried that at some point and BUSTED themselves up as a result.
The trick with the scooter boards is to go backwards, use the length of your legs to push yourself faster than pulling yourself along. Only learning curve is having to look behind you and brake with your shoes when at speed.
I grew up in a rainy town, which meant us kids could choose to play outside in the weather OR in the gym with FULL ACCESS to the PE closet during recess. It was seriously the best!
Also a rainy town for me, but it was outside only since the gym was almost always occupied if I remember correctly. Since no one liked to try to play in the rain and never learning to bring their jackets out with them that their parents made the pack, we had kids just huddled in the breezeways staying dry (California style elementary school located in a rain state, brilliant idea. That same idea also applied to my high-school, just without recess) at least the outdoor basketball hoops had a roof over them at the elementary school before they rebuilt the place. I'll have to take a day to go check out the new layout some weekend. I think it's maybe been 2 years since it was all rebuilt. The only thing I think is left of the old place is the kickball/baseball field
We called it the Bleep Test in secondary school in the 00s here in the U.K. I was the fattest girl in the class but I wasn’t the first to tap out, far from it. I was determined not to completely humiliate myself. I remember gritting my teeth, snarling and fighting every part of my body to keep going. It was awful. 🙂↕️
I threw up after every pacer test. It got to the point where I actually snapped back at my teacher after they berated me for "crowding the trash can" instead of running. I was going to the nurse, I was getting some rest, and I would definitely NOT be doing another pacer test ever again. I'd love to say "and I never did", as if my 13 year old outburst made a difference and the teacher changed their ways, but the reality was I didn't have to do it because I had therapy during PE from then on. Still a lifesaver, though.
Good to know I'm not the only one (sorry you went through that shit too, tho). I was always on the verge of throwing up (and have before) from this god damn pacer test and my teacher would tell me to just suck it up, other kids would laugh at me as well. I've never heard good experiences from others about this pacer test.
With the parachute, we used to put a dodgeball in there and see if we could launch it at the ceiling as hard as possible. It caused a pretty good amount of dodgeballs to forever be wedged inbetween the ceiling beams.
The scooter boards were removed from my PE class because myself and a handful of other delinquents started riding them like skateboards because of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater being popular at the time and someone ended up breaking their arm in the process
I got in trouble for standing on one because we weren't allowed to stand on them, it was just for a second then my teacher walked up to me went "N. O. spells No!" Probably into her fucking microphone and I cried getting off the scooter and I was probably sent to the penalty box for it.😡
My coach and class treated the pacer test like an elimination game. For us it was to the other side of the gym and back every time (the gym was like 1 basket court size), and whoever didn’t make it to the other side before the beep was eliminated.
My parents didnt gice a damn about health. I was 315lbs in my freshman year. My soul left me when I saw that and I told a couple teachers i wanted to change my life and I credit them for taking the extra step to help me change and not just follow curriculum. I graduated HS at 220lbs and continued my better choices into my 30s today.
That’s awesome!! Good job taking initiative and I’m so glad you had supportive teachers that care about more than just your curriculum but your personal development too:) those are good teachers!!
I got sent to the principal’s office in 2nd grade because I refused to shake hands with the other students after games on the basis that I’d seen them fail to wash their hands in the bathroom.
Oh my gosh I hate it so much when people don't wash their hands after the bathroom! I was babysitting this kid today (he was 5), and he utterly refused to wash his hands with soap. Ewww
Back in my day you had to beat up someone or deface school property to get sent to the principles office, and you have to come up with an answer for their exasperated "why did you do that?" that isn't "I am chaos incarnate" because you know that won't go over well :(
did anybody else have a huge gym class unit on speed stacking cups??? there were so many video tutorials and we always got catalogues for them at school. if you were good at it or if you had your own glow in the dark ones, you were COOL
Yep, and there was one year that my gym teacher made me cry because I was not very good at it due to my poor hand-eye coordination and reaction time and she yelled at me for it lol
I’m glad to know we can all bond over the fact we hated the pacer test. I always told myself to at least make it past 20 so it would be less embarrassing when I would quit. I remember my classmates and me hyperventilating and clawing on the floor coughing like crazy. Some of us even had to go to the nurse because it was so bad. And the lines for the water fountain were awful. The pacer test for me felt more like a punishment then us getting exercise.
Hey, Canadian here. We had scooter boards, but not too many of us rode them in the traditional sense. We had access to jump ropes and hula hoops in our class, so we created crazy train-like contraptions where you would have like 8 kids being pulled along by some kids in a hula hoop like they were fkin horses.
God pe terrified me as a kid, you could always tell when the pacer test was coming up because one day you would be in the library and you would hear the incessant beeps and squeaks of gym shoes from the gym next door. We also had this game called “stinger tag” where about 6-8 kids where given a segment of a pool noodle, and, obviously, these were always a small rotation of the gym teacher’s favorites/athletic kids. Meanwhile, everyone else would be lined up against the bleachers, waiting for the game to start. In these few agonizing minutes the kids with the stingers would prowl the open gym floor, sizing up their prey, slamming their pool noodles against the floor in a bid of intimidation, the sound reverberating and multiplying around the high ceilings as more and more noodles slapped the floor in no describable rhythm, before the piercing shriek of the whistle blew, signaling the start of your mad dash to survive. Oh and we had a jump rope test
I think I had a game similar to stinger that had to do with sharks. Sharks had a pool noodle and we had to run to the other side of the gym without us touching the pool noodle. If you did touch it you were forced to become a shark. Hated that game. Luckily after elementary I no longer had to take PE because they had another option to take karate instead (which I did)
13:56 the sit and reach test was SUCH a confidence booster for me in school because even though I was a fat kid, I'm really flexible so I was able to get a further reach than anyone. Then I grew up and learned that my hip/spine problems actually make me hyperflexible lol
All I remember from PE is that they made me hate exercising as a whole. It was either competiton sports (and I hate competition and how everything has to be one) or comparing (as if 2 people are going to be exactly the same) I would much rather have had a math test than any PE-test, I would fail either, yes, but with the math test I at least wouldn't have to try to catch my breath trying to find the square root of 335.5. I was well into adulthood, when I found out from exercise-videos on TH-cam that exercise doesn't have to be competitive, and it doesn't have to involve military-like behaviour, and that it's okay to take breaks. That whole revelation changed my perspective tbh
Being good at sports is genetics that’s probably why. I study astronomy but I used to play basketball for a team and sports has always been awesome for me since I’m athletic
I remember my elementary school had a “field day” but it was just us running the mile while our parents crowded around the track handing us water bottles and spraying us with water misters while we ran. As someone with asthma, I despised those days 💀
Gym class was so intense back then because they knew boys would likely be drafted shortly after high school. They were training boys to be soldiers. The British Pathe video you showed is from around the Korean or Vietnam war (I read about it but can't remember which). If the new recruits are in great shape right off the bat, they military doesn't have to spend as much time/effort getting them ready to go to war
yup, now its mostly used to keep tabs on the general 'health' of the countries kids. at least in america with the whole pacer testing, 2x yearly height/weight tracking, situp/pushups testing, ect. (its literally pointless, everyone i knew would end up doing bare minimum, usually like 10 situps and 5 laps running lmfao)
That’s a actually really dark. Imagine just getting out of high school only to be drafted into a war where you could possibly die or experience some sort of life altering injury or witness someone else go through that.
In 6th grade my middle school got funding to build a track, and P.E. just devolved into walking around the track. They'd count the number of laps you made and that was the entirety of P.E. Different school in 7th grade, their system was P.E. half the year, elective the other half. But they never switched so I just had band all year and never took a single P.E. class.
That's hilarious. They paid for it and they were damn well gonna get their money's worth. (As someone who hated anything athletic - still do tbh - I would've loved a gym class that was just walking in circles.)
When we switched from online to hybrid PE was just us walking around the track too. It was so fun though because you'd just talk with your friends. And walking is excercise!!
I personally had excuses for not being in PE for two years of high school and wasn’t put into it for my third year either. The first year I had driver’s ed instead (we split the PE into half the year we take PE and half the year we take health) but we only actually had to do health for that year. Then, the second year I was taking some college classes and apparently when taking those I didn’t have to do PE either. Then for my third year, I was in the person arranging the schedule’s office and they didn’t even notice and when I pointed it out, they said “oh, well. Just don’t tell anyone”. I WAS SO LUCKY :D
if only I could have gotten out of gym by being in band...I even got a varsity letter in marching band in high school yet still had to take gym class every single day (minus the day I had my honors/AP science lab)
Also I think my school made a fun game with the parachute. One student puts a ball on the chute, everyone collectively launches the ball, one student catches the ball. In the end the ball loader and ball catcher dive under the chute and whoever crawls out the other side first becomes the new ball loader. Rinse, repeat. It was like duck duck goose but with a catapult lol.
My P.E. experience was probably different than most because I took P.E. online. We would basically have some simple health lessons, guess how many calories were in different fast foods, watch sports movies, take online bmi tests, talk about mental health, watch yoga videos we were supposed to follow along with, and copy exercises. Our cameras were all off so no one could tell if we were doing the exercises or even listening.
idk if this was just my school, but sometimes during pe the coaches would bring out the CUPS. we had these sets of cups made for professional cup stacking and they would time us and see how fast we could stack and unstack cups. i also remember when adults weren’t looking me and my friends would put the cups on our feet and like walk around with them but that might just have been because we were weird playground roleplay kids. anyway those were the bomb and professional cup stacking is my favorite sport.
The dude who announced the Pacer test also had other things, there was one for push-ups and sit-ups that's all I can remember. But for my school we ran all the way to the other side instead of the middle.
Ya, the running was the best of them all IMO, though that's not saying much. At least with the running test, you could purposely sack a "life" to take a small break by just walking at a normal speed for one "lap" and then getting back to where you started the next.
Yeah our school had one for sit-ups and push-ups, and they’d give you a bad grade if you didn’t score well. Kinda fucked up now that I think about it, as I was a chubby kid and it’s not like I could just instantly become fitter
My elementary/middle school also used the same sit-up/push-up audio CD. I distinctly remember someone saying that it sounded like he was burping when he said “up.” I couldn’t unhear it after that lol
I went to a private catholic elementary school and a public middle school. One had scooter boards, parachutes, field day, and weigh ins where the results were announced. While the other was usually basic pushups/other exercises and dodgeball. Both had the Pacer Test.
Hello, Gen alpha here and I can indeed confirm, scooters, rubber bolling balls, field day, and jump rope for heart are all still things I did at my elementary school.
As a late 00s kid who grew up mostly in the 2010s, I can confirm these were plastic for me. Kids liked forming trains out of them, with one kid pulling everyone forward. ❤
I wish ours were heavy. They were so light, if your balance wasn't perfect or if you didn't have at least one foot on the ground they would tip over and launch themselves out from under you at 80 miles an hour
As someone with a chronic illness that went undiagnosed until my late teens, P.E was the absolute worst to me. Needless to say, getting things thrown at you and running around all the time when you have a very low pain threshold and endurance is not very fun. My secondary school had two gym teachers and the one I had would always do this insane endurance test at the start of the year that always left everyone pretty much crippled for a week because of how sore our muscles would be
I was about to comment a very similar thing. PE was absolute HELL for me, between several undiagnosed health conditions and sensory intolorances I could not keep up with the other kids and I was miserable. Reading the comments I always forget, oh yeah most people didn't hate PE, but I still don't understand how.
Same here ! I just had trouble breathing, throwing stuff with strength, random pains... I remember one of my teachers just yelling at me to stop being a crybaby when I had asthma attacks but didn't know what they were yet Why do PE teacher just hate kids ?!
There’s PE teachers that are interested in helping kids with motor development and there’s PE teachers who I swear are actual sadists… There’s way too many of the second kind
idk if this was just something my school did, but whenever jump rope for heart came around, they would set up a huge obstacle course in the gym that was supposed to represent a heart. we literally just spent all 40 minutes of class running, crawling, and scooting through the obstacle course with the latest kidz bop in the background. AND IT WAS GLORIOUS. still wish they washed the jerseys once in a while though.
We didn't have this but at my jump rope for heart days I remember getting really tired of just jumping so I asked the teachers if we could turn the corner of the gym into a dance space and they did, and they continued to have the dance square even after I left
YES i loved doing the cardio system! we would have red and blue balls to represent oxygenated blood and non-oxygenated blood, you’d have to carry your ball the whole obstacle and swap it out when you (the blood cell) reached the body part blood was pumping to and when you reached the lungs and received oxygen
My school did this. You'd be given a foam ball representing oxygen, and you're the blood cell and you're riding around on one of those scooter boards, and you're gym teacher is yelling at everyone to keep pace, because this is a heart, and will die if the "oxygen" doesn't get to the lungs in time. It was super fun, honestly.
I watched this with my brother who’s currently in fifth grade. Some, he remembered vividly but say they stopped using at some point (such as jump rope, stretch boards, etc) said they still use (pacer test, parachute, scooter boards) and some he had no familiar memories with (moon shoes, fake bowling, etc)
10:00 The FitnessGram™ Pacer Test is a multistage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues. The 20 meter pacer test will begin in 30 seconds. Line up at the start. The running speed starts slowly, but gets faster each minute after you hear this signal. [beep] A single lap should be completed each time you hear this sound. [ding] Remember to run in a straight line, and run as long as possible. The second time you fail to complete a lap before the sound, your test is over. The test will begin on the word start. On your mark, get ready, start.
Second video I have come across today where that is brought up and also typed out in a comment.... First one was the lastest Taskmaster episode(if you have not seen it, I recommend it, right here for free on YT!)
At my elementary school we used to do "Mission Impossible" obstacle courses. They'd set up balancing beams, tiny hurdles, ladder things you'd climb over a spooky decal of a shark, the whole ten yards, and dim the lights while playing the Mission Impossible theme. It was definitely a highlight of elementary gym class for me, made me feel like a super cool spy.
Well yeah.. they did what they were good at the same as everyone else. If you aren't good at school paperwork then you were usually at least good at PE
Being a relatively easy class it shouldn’t be that hard to fail unless you are lazy af in my case since I’m relatively physically able it was the one of the few classes I got a high grade in
Half those stuff were in my PE class in elementary and middle school in the 90s! I found the rainbow parachute was like Gymboree in elementary school. The scooter boards in middle school was so much fun, we did obstacle courses! Also we didn’t have moon shoes, instead we had Skip Its! Also Jump rope for heart was a charity scam, my high school stopped doing it by sophomore year and they changed the fundraiser.
I am from Switzerland and we had scooter boards but we used them not so often. We also had like only 5 and during free activity, the fastest kids took them right away.
The pacer test (and by extension, the mile run) were my least favorite things about P.E., to the point where I just finally stopped doing P.E. in high school. Why was it so bad for me? Turns out, I have kneecaps that are too high, so any running is bad for them and makes me hurt extra (with the added bonus of them coming out of their sockets randomly!)
moonshoes at school? that's wild lol. we definitely didn't have that, but I got them for christmas in like 2004/5 and my disappointment was all the same
A lot of the elementary school PE activities are meant to stimulate, and encourage a healthy growth of your fine motor skills, problem solving, and general mental growth. It’s also pretty good at keeping kids engaged when they’re rowdy in the morning, after lunch, or before school lets out.
I remember being the one severely asthmatic kid in class during the pacer test. I was always the first one out and had to sit there for 10-20 minutes while all the REALLY competitive and athletic kids ran back and forth endlessly My gym teacher would force me to at least finish the first round because I honestly didn’t care enough put in even THAT level of effort
Dream Jelly - I’m from the UK and we had the exact same thing as your ‘Pacer’ test but in secondary school. It was just named the ‘beep test’ and we all HATED it! The distance was from one end of the school hall to the other…. who thinks of such crazy stuff! 😅 Thanks for the brilliant videos - Ian ❤xx
Oh my word yes, this was literally a nightmare. It seemed it was designed to be near impossible to beat, even if you tried your hardest to do so. Also those P.E. hall floors were slippery at times.
the way i remember the p.e. coach telling us that we had to put our hands inside the scooter board instead of the part because they’d get smushed.. and the PACER TEST.. aside from me being a chubby kid in my elementary days who always got winded from it so easily, i remember falling one time and not even getting a score (pretty much a zero i think?)… good times. sadly i didn’t get to use the parachute that much, but it was definitely a fun experience! as for field day, i think we had a kickball game by the end of the other games, but it was so so hot the ground literally felt like it was burning my bum.
God I was a chubby kid in middle school and it was dreadful. The worst part? I think I’d genuinely get the same score as my middle school me if I tried it now, even though I’ve lost weight. Lungs are fucked I think
In Australia we call the ‘pacer test’ the ‘beep test’ and everyone would take it SO seriously on the day (it also has a different voice and he says start level 1:1, start level 1:2 e.t.c before every run). Also we called the ‘school olympics’ an athletics carnival which was also a big deal, not just in our heads like everyone was pretty sporty but the RLY sporty kids were always hardcore, entering every running heat, long jump, high jump, shotput, and javelin in the hopes of getting a good enough time or distance/height to go to ‘zone’- where you’d compete against kids from other schools who were also the best (like American school olympics). And then if you won there you’d go to state, then national level. Having a title like zone or state winner was a huge deal and honestly still is, the event is huge for kids, they train for it and there’s even branded jackets and stuff that the organisers sell at said competitions (same system with swimming carnivals). But otherwise everything else (those weird wheely boards aside) is accurate. In Aus we’d play ‘cat and mouse’ with the parachute, which was essentially duck duck goose but under the parachute. Also we have our own weird games that I’d love to know if anyone else played, one that’s uniquely Australian in my opinion is ‘bin ball’. Bin ball was a fan favourite and was essentially dodgeball but there was a wheely bin (America doesn’t have those right?) behind each team and as well as aiming for people you aimed for the bin as hitting the bin meant winning, whether or not everyone in the other team was out or not.
>be in pe class >teacher says we play basketball >im excited > teacher selecting what team has to wear unwashed sweaty bibs >my team forced to wear bibs >i no longer want to play basketball
I remember my elementary school had Jump Rope for Heart day where if you paid like 10 dollars, you got to leave class, bring snacks and drinks from home, and go jump rope outside for 3 hours. Granted, not many people actually jump roped and we just hung out with each other. Also, my school never had Field Day, rather we had Fall Fest and Spring Fling where the school would rent a bunch of inflatables and sometimes carnival rides and have games too.
we had field day and fall fest, and of course the best one, summer fest, those were absolutely peak and i adored having all the booths with the carnival games and the inflatables and stuff. awesome sauce stuff!!!
In elementary school at the end of field day the local fire department would come and spray their water trucks into the air and let it fall down on us. One of my best memories
What I really hated about the pacer test was that there were to many kids on the line. The first part it was incredibly difficult to touch the line since everyone was so squished together.
I was manufactured in 2001, and my school never had the moon shoes. We did, however, have a rock wall we weren't allowed to climb and occasionally went to a portable to watch a video of some dude spreading germs onto a whole dozen of donuts. That little roll out TV cart had many a scary video on it.
when i was in elementary school they thought it was a brilliant idea to put the gym outside on the pavement... in the scorching florida sun. doing the pacer test in 100 degrees fahrenheit with limited water breaks is a different kind of stress. if it was raining outside when we had to go out for pe, we would all huddle into the storage room and watch these green screen video things where the host would yell to run in place to escape the jungle or whatever location for like 20 minutes and that was all we did. unsurprisingly, everyone loved it because it was so easy and we would just shuffle in place for a while
Oh, the ludicriously hot Florida subtype of Pacer test with pavement running, my beloathed. Although my elementary school's choice of weird videos when it rained would be some Cirque de Soleil, which was incredibly trippy and still is to reflect back on. At least the Pacer test had alright music for when you were worn out, though it can't compare to a certain spoof from a certain MMO I've been obsessed with lately. Obligatory Pacesetter mention here.
Born in 2004, I'm jealous all we did was dodgeball or play on playground. We occasionally did bowling ball but most days it was a dodgeball game. I was good at dodging. I even stayed last place just dodging in one game but lost when opposing team caught ball I had to throw back. We didn't have beep pacer test but instead mile run. We did to sit up and push ups for pacer test. I sucked at these.
I didn't had a pacer test, but I remember one teacher (who was a retired athlete and a nurse, dude was so good and strict I lost 5 kilos under him in 2 months) that had a form of "punishment" that he (and other sport teachers I remember) called "self-exit" (the actual word for it). It was to run to each line of the gym and back to the first one, until you did a whole gym run. It was called "one self exit". When we were particularly energetic, he would give 5-8 of these and we had to complete in 10 minutes tops. Like, we didn't had to actually run every lap because every kid had different needs (I myself being on medicine that inhibited my sense of tiredness had to be held back by him if he saw I was running too much) but we had to do it in that window of time and the first ones which finished the "self exit" could rest until the last one finished. Then we would start PE.
My friends and I used to pull each other around on the scooter boards with jump ropes and then launch each other across the gym at top speed lol. It actually was a pretty good workout
Oh dear God, I saw the parachute and terrible jump ropes in the thumbnail and was TRIGGERED. Here’s something to blow your mind-I’m 36, so I went to school in the 90s. We played the exact. Same. Crap. 😂
I was in elementary from 2013-2021(JK-Junior Kindergarten, kids were 3-4, play, Senior Kindergarten, ages 4-5, mainly play) 7th grade I was in middle school then I went to Catholic school where you had elementary JK-gr 8 so I got a continuation of elementary in 2022-2023
5:05 I don't necessarily remember using these at school but definitely used them during game time in kids church back in the day, and they were Hella fun!
My elementary school had a full “gymnastics” course, which pretty much just an obstacle course with climbing structures and a balance beam. My middle school had an archery unit, and even a canoeing week since the school was near a creek.
OMG thanks for mentioning my video! truly nobody talks about boomerang but it was such a unique viewing experience compared to other channels at the time?? i love your content btw! i've been watching since the claire's video :D
I remember using all that equipment when I was in elementary school. I loved field day as a kid, it was the only time we got out of school on purpose for fun at the park.
I think the coolest part of my elementary school’s field day was the fact that the local firemen would bring the fire truck and spray it up into the air and onto everyone. I also remember the one time when I was in fourth grade and sprayed sunscreen into my eyes😭
My elementary school years were from '96 to '02 and we had an annual week of dancing. We did line and square dancing, the chicken dance, the hokey pokey... way funner than sport ball. Badminton, volley ball and dodge ball were also top tier fun days. Our field day we competed against the other elementary schools in the district and plastic medals were awarded. I won the 500 meter dash one year and felt like a top athlete for a day. My kids don't even know what dodge ball is, but they still do the parachute and the scooters.
Aussie here, and I defs had the scooter boards at my school, but they were mostly relegated to after-school care rather than PE. I assume they came about from the wheel dolly’s used to help move heavy stuff. Someone saw those and thought “if I make that colourful and cheap to produce, kids will eat it up” and they were right.
The PACER test gave me the first inkling that I might not be breathing like the other kids (I was diagnosed with exercise induced asthma later). No one else made a horrible grating, wheezing sound after they collapsed against the wall after finally missing a beep. Nor did their legs kind of turn a concerning bluish color. I would force myself to keep going because you had to be able to do a certain amount to get an A and I was just a tiny little bit grade obsessed. I loved the activities, though, like the scooters, the parachute, the bouncy balls, etc. Our field day was like what you described with the elementary olympics but without competing with other schools. The classes in each grade would compete and I think the winning class got a pizza party or something.
I work at an elementary school, and can tell you with certainty that 90% of these things are still used today. I was SHOOK to see those jumpropes with the like "beads" still in the PE storage room and the rolly things and then shook again to see them USING them. They still do stack cups, but not fitnessgram or square dancing. The only new thing ive seen added (which only three schools in the district even have) are mini rock climbing walls. They still do 5120+, the mile, and the mileage club. It was wild to see 14 years later (I was in 5th grade in 2010)
At my elementary school's field day, we had to sign up for the events/races (I'd always sign up for the 100yd Dash every year even though I always got last...). If you were in the top 5, you'd get a little colored paper of what you placed. On the day of, we'd all sit in a rectangle area and watch through each race. It was a great time for all day talking with your friends as you waited for the races to cheer your friends on. And we'd end the event with a water balloon fight and popsicles! It truly was a time.
I remember the pacer test beep was a twinkely high pitched beep. And yeah there was usually only one kid that got even close to level 20. There was no shame in tapping out early. Last I heard they dropped the pacer test a few years ago as it was classified as a form of torture. That might have been just a meme but I took it at face value because it is was torture
I remember the pacer test, and ive never heard the end. Every time we did it in class, no matter the school, there would always be at least one kid that pushed so far they threw up when they tried to get water. I remember 2 kids in 3rd grade running the hell out of it, and it was around the 84th mark where they finally tapped out. To this day that's the longest ive ever seen someone last, it was incredible
I remember in elementary school we got the scooters banned. We would spend every class with one person on a scooter holding one end of a jump rope while another kid would wip them around the gym while dragging them with the other end of the jump rope. It got to the point where we one kid would be slinging a line of like 4 kids all on there own scooters each attached by a jump rope. They were banned because some kid got swung full force into a desk that was for some reason in the gym. Best times of my life 100%
oh yeah anonymously I'll say in middle school when we did the sit-up/crunch thing I lost control and continually farted throughout like half of it while the whole class laughed. it was formative.
Probably the weirdest memory I have of elementary school PE was when for a couple day, they set up this giant obstacle course that is supposed to replicate the way the human heart works. You would scoot around the floor, go through large tubes, and climb through the heart and stuff. It was honestly some of the most fun days in class, and it definitely did teach me about how the heart works back then,, but I could not tell you any of that information now if I tried ;-;
Damn American schools of the 2000s sound like so much more fun! In Germany, we also had a "field day" however we had to do more traditional sports like track running, jumping and throwing a discus. We also had something akin to the pacer test, however we had to run for 30 mins straight. That was it, literally just running, sprinting even, and I hated every second of it lol
Wait a second, your field day was rad. 😂 I'm from Canada and ours was always lowkey trying to find the next Olympians with long jumps, high jumps, disc throwing, short and long track races, etc. It was one of those days that all the jock kids LOVED and made everyone else feel inferior.
My elementary school had something called Scooter Highway. My gym teachers would have a theme, and make a town around it. There was usually an “ice-skating rink”, a TV watching station, a car wash, and a spinning rope station. We would even make our own drivers licenses and glue on a picture of ourselves (we would draw dots with markers on our licenses to show which station we went to during the day). Such great memories, holy crap
This brought back so many memories for me! I loved playing with the scooter boards and parachute but I never really liked PE that much. It was always where I got yelled at and picked on the most cuz I’m neither athletic nor coordinated. And I remember my elementary school PE did this thing where they would put us in different groups that we would be in for the entire year and switch between different activities with our groups. And I remember when we had partner activities, no one wanted to be my partner, especially the snarky girls. There was one time when volleyball was one of our activities and my group had four girls and four boys, so we could easily do a girl team and boy team and the snarky girls in my group made me be on the boys team, while there was a boy on their team, and they easily coulda just done girls vs boys. Does that make ANY sense to you? And I remember on our field days, we would rotate between different activities and the older kids would put colors on our score cards, yellow being the lowest and blue being the highest, and I always got a ton of yellows! And of course, I was ALWAYS the first one out on the PACER.
we used to always play meteor ball, it was like dodgeball but with no boundaries and it was pure chaos. especially chaotic when you have eye of the tiger blasting over the speakers and the kids get way too hyped
My school had a roller skating unit where we skated in circles around the gym for half an hour! We could even limbo under a bungee cord strapped between two vertical poles.
I just now realized what that parachute thing is for while watching this video. I think it's like a children's version of the rope some gyms have, which is basically just a big heavy rope to swing around. That's why they have you wave it around before lifting it up to go underneath, it's just a lighter and more fun version of the rope
@@waffleson45 Mrs. Sutton and Mrs. Waugh never played marbles with us, but we'd bowl. The fourth and fifth graders got to go to the bowling alley for a field trip. They even had four pound rubber bowling balls (to train us with) and replica bowling pins so we can bowl in the carpeted gym. We'd take turns setting up the pins in their specially marked places. We had 8 lanes marked with some Velcro like tape that hooked into the carpet. They even made "gutters" with the Velcro tape on each end (that is why we had 8 lanes).
I remember when I was in 4th or 5th grade I my first panic attack after the pacer test and then 20 minutes later I had another one during dismissal. Fun times
Oh man, Jump Rope for heart! I remember doing this every year and it took until my 5th grade year to realize that the amount of jumps I did did not in fact mean anything, and the prizes were for the kids who sold stuff from the magazine TuT
My school was always so against bringing out the scooters, but we were all SO obsessed with them. The gym would erupt into cheers every time they were sitting out as we walked into class
Go to galaxylamps.co/dreamjelly, use the code DREAMJELLY, and get your Galaxy Projector 2.0 with 15% off!
I have never seen someone sponsor a lamp light
It looks cool
I’m so mad I was sold by this, congrats jelly you found the 1st ever TH-cam ad I’ve ever been sold on. 😡
4:55 we did use those scooters in my school in Canada. We even played Dr. dodgeball when we were on them at some point.
@@MaxElizabethboi?
Such a cool lamp!!
In elementary school, we didn't have a field day, but we had something called water day (legit the best day ever). These were usually on the weeks leading up to the last day of school, and we would have water slides, water games, Popsicles, it was legit the funnest day in my life. I miss those days where school would celebrate you going to a new grade by letting us do fun activities
We had that too, it was great!!
We did that on to we did rely races than we had water slides/games and popsicles but we called in field day
My school had something like that. It was sort of a mix of field day where doing activities got you points where you’d “buy” otter pops as rewards but there was a ton of water balloon ones. By the end of it there were rubber balloon ends everywhere and some tipped over sprinklers.
I LOVED WATER DAY 😭 I MISS IT
Oooo we had both! They just made up stuff all the time. One time we spent the whole day playing on a giant homemade slip and slide made with tarps and a water hose. One time fire trucks came and sprayed us. One time we had a giant grade wide volleyball tournament.
I have seen one kid complete the pacer test, in fifth grade. He vomited on the floor and collapsed right after. Ambulance came, I’ll never forget that though he lives in my head rent free
I didn’t know you could complete it. When I did it a year and a half ago, I got to 50 laps and then stopped because I was the last girl still there
@@ChickenNugget-ev8zd it was a gaining consciousness kind of memory he may of gotten just very high but I distinctly remember everyone freaking out and waiting so long for him and then him puking and falling. You’re baller af for getting to 50 AND being the final girl in there! I would end up quitting so quickly from my lungs feeling like hot fire lolol
@gingperson6698 I feel like my middle school set the line to be much longer than the test instructions stated the two lines should be, then again my class that year were a bit taller than most of the other students at the school that year.
I almost vomited one time taking the test but I ran 130 laps so that’s probably why
Wait, can I live in there too? I'll take out the trash, help with chores....
As a fellow 2000s kid, I can confirm the accuracy of the video. Probably the weirdest thing my elementary school PE class ever did though was that we had a unit where we literally just played Mario DDR for like a few weeks.
LUCKY. I know I would have been terrible at it, but I'm still jealous
Yes! We played Dance Dance Revolution Extreme 2 on PS2 in elementary school. It was the best day ever
@@amandalovesthesims2 omg! I had a very similar experience. We had the unit for like a week before some boy fell backwards and broke his wrist. best week of my life
@@sophia_col ouch, poor guy lol
I loved the dance dance revolution gym days
The big parachute thing was my single favorite thing in P.E. growing up. Idk why but it brings me so much joy. Also I will never forget the distinct *prang* of a rubber dodgeball and the PAIN of a slightly flat one hitting you in the face.
While my schools (elementary through high school) didn't have the rubber balls, we learned pretty fast that the pitchers on the baseball team can flatten those foam balls against the padded walls opposite to them by at minimum of high school.
My school used a rubber ball on top of a parachute. Bouncing it around and trying not to let the ball fall the most fun we could think of
cookie run fan spotted
The big parachute is core memory for me. I it was so mesmerizing idk why
Same here. I learned that you can hole yourself up in a corner and avoid all of that as a young kid.
This is making me realize how much I miss elementary school and how easy it was. Making friends, the school work, the activites. If only it was like that forever.
I wish I could relive it tbh 😢
It is fascinating how distinct the smell and sound of rubber kickballs were, to the point I can instantaneously recall both despite not having seen one in over a decade
scrumptious
I swear I can almost taste the rubber and blood on my lips after getting my block absolutely knocked off.
And how every single school seemed to have this EXACT PE closet with all the same stuff
Also these things were more satisfying to kick than any other ball ever produced, felt like they had IRL hitstop
@@colbyboucher6391 probably something about the elasticity.
Scooter boards are about maneuvering your body, moonshoes are about steadiness, parachute is about teamwork - all also get you moving and developing your little muscles. These activities were genius bc these super important skills were presented to us as the best gym days.
no no no no no the scooter boards were about running as fast as you can with them then jumping on them and flying across the gym
I had Moon Shoes and I was so afraid of snapping my ankle on them
@@trulyirrelevant17 🤣😅I think our gym teachers might've flipped their lid if we tried doing that. Probably becasue someone tried that at some point and BUSTED themselves up as a result.
The trick with the scooter boards is to go backwards, use the length of your legs to push yourself faster than pulling yourself along. Only learning curve is having to look behind you and brake with your shoes when at speed.
I said a “Poops for fart” joke about hoops for heart, & my friend group disowned me after lol, I wish I was joking.
a fit punishment for your crime (you had to be very young for your friend group to just disown you like that)
Good on you brother
That's crazy. How old were you when that happened?
You deserved better!
I'm sorry that happened, that's objectively hilarious.
I grew up in a rainy town, which meant us kids could choose to play outside in the weather OR in the gym with FULL ACCESS to the PE closet during recess. It was seriously the best!
Also a rainy town for me, but it was outside only since the gym was almost always occupied if I remember correctly. Since no one liked to try to play in the rain and never learning to bring their jackets out with them that their parents made the pack, we had kids just huddled in the breezeways staying dry (California style elementary school located in a rain state, brilliant idea. That same idea also applied to my high-school, just without recess) at least the outdoor basketball hoops had a roof over them at the elementary school before they rebuilt the place.
I'll have to take a day to go check out the new layout some weekend. I think it's maybe been 2 years since it was all rebuilt. The only thing I think is left of the old place is the kickball/baseball field
bro you were so goddamn lucky
We called it the Bleep Test in secondary school in the 00s here in the U.K. I was the fattest girl in the class but I wasn’t the first to tap out, far from it. I was determined not to completely humiliate myself. I remember gritting my teeth, snarling and fighting every part of my body to keep going. It was awful. 🙂↕️
I threw up after every pacer test. It got to the point where I actually snapped back at my teacher after they berated me for "crowding the trash can" instead of running. I was going to the nurse, I was getting some rest, and I would definitely NOT be doing another pacer test ever again.
I'd love to say "and I never did", as if my 13 year old outburst made a difference and the teacher changed their ways, but the reality was I didn't have to do it because I had therapy during PE from then on. Still a lifesaver, though.
Sounds like you were a pretty unhealthy kid. Instead of avoiding exercise forever you should have seen a doctor.
yikes...
What a crappy teacher. Weird to berate a kid for throwing up from overexerting themselves! Glad you got to skip out
Good to know I'm not the only one (sorry you went through that shit too, tho). I was always on the verge of throwing up (and have before) from this god damn pacer test and my teacher would tell me to just suck it up, other kids would laugh at me as well. I've never heard good experiences from others about this pacer test.
@@newxenesisthe only way someone would have a good experience from it is if they never had to do it
With the parachute, we used to put a dodgeball in there and see if we could launch it at the ceiling as hard as possible. It caused a pretty good amount of dodgeballs to forever be wedged inbetween the ceiling beams.
Ah the ancient relics housed in the heavens above
Yes! That's what we did!!
Shoutout to all the second and third balls that would get stuck In ceiling, trying to get the first one down
The scooter boards were removed from my PE class because myself and a handful of other delinquents started riding them like skateboards because of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater being popular at the time and someone ended up breaking their arm in the process
I got in trouble for standing on one because we weren't allowed to stand on them, it was just for a second then my teacher walked up to me went "N. O. spells No!" Probably into her fucking microphone and I cried getting off the scooter and I was probably sent to the penalty box for it.😡
Yo that rules!
Yeah we had teachers yelling at us that we had to sit on them, not stand on the scooters
Skill issue
I think injuries is why most of these never come out
My coach and class treated the pacer test like an elimination game. For us it was to the other side of the gym and back every time (the gym was like 1 basket court size), and whoever didn’t make it to the other side before the beep was eliminated.
That, but you have to either clearly fail or barely fail twice in a row.
Omg. That was how my school did it too! And I was always the first one out
WHO KEPT TAKING A BITE OUT OF THE FOAM FOOTBALL
🤣
Me! ME!!
Probably some little kid who mistaked it for food. I think we all did that once when we were really little kids.
My parents didnt gice a damn about health. I was 315lbs in my freshman year. My soul left me when I saw that and I told a couple teachers i wanted to change my life and I credit them for taking the extra step to help me change and not just follow curriculum. I graduated HS at 220lbs and continued my better choices into my 30s today.
That's really cool! Congrats on turning things around!
Dead ass still a part of me that will never forgive my folks for allowing me to be a fat child.
That’s awesome!! Good job taking initiative and I’m so glad you had supportive teachers that care about more than just your curriculum but your personal development too:) those are good teachers!!
That's really respectable.
@@SuperRat420 Reminds me of how my grandma always overfed me when I was younger.
I got sent to the principal’s office in 2nd grade because I refused to shake hands with the other students after games on the basis that I’d seen them fail to wash their hands in the bathroom.
respect tbh. 8 year olds should know how to wash their hands
Oh my gosh I hate it so much when people don't wash their hands after the bathroom! I was babysitting this kid today (he was 5), and he utterly refused to wash his hands with soap. Ewww
Back in my day you had to beat up someone or deface school property to get sent to the principles office, and you have to come up with an answer for their exasperated "why did you do that?" that isn't "I am chaos incarnate" because you know that won't go over well :(
@@abbyelectric 🤓🤓🤓🤓
Nah frrr
did anybody else have a huge gym class unit on speed stacking cups??? there were so many video tutorials and we always got catalogues for them at school. if you were good at it or if you had your own glow in the dark ones, you were COOL
Yep went to a school that did that!
Yep, and there was one year that my gym teacher made me cry because I was not very good at it due to my poor hand-eye coordination and reaction time and she yelled at me for it lol
No but we did have that included in a presentation assembly idr in elementary school that I did get eventually for Xmas
Yes! We had the assembly too, and the PE teacher gave us catalogues to buy our own as well! But yea we had mini ones, big ones, all colors…
YES OH MY GOD
I’m glad to know we can all bond over the fact we hated the pacer test. I always told myself to at least make it past 20 so it would be less embarrassing when I would quit. I remember my classmates and me hyperventilating and clawing on the floor coughing like crazy. Some of us even had to go to the nurse because it was so bad. And the lines for the water fountain were awful. The pacer test for me felt more like a punishment then us getting exercise.
Hey, Canadian here. We had scooter boards, but not too many of us rode them in the traditional sense. We had access to jump ropes and hula hoops in our class, so we created crazy train-like contraptions where you would have like 8 kids being pulled along by some kids in a hula hoop like they were fkin horses.
God pe terrified me as a kid, you could always tell when the pacer test was coming up because one day you would be in the library and you would hear the incessant beeps and squeaks of gym shoes from the gym next door. We also had this game called “stinger tag” where about 6-8 kids where given a segment of a pool noodle, and, obviously, these were always a small rotation of the gym teacher’s favorites/athletic kids. Meanwhile, everyone else would be lined up against the bleachers, waiting for the game to start. In these few agonizing minutes the kids with the stingers would prowl the open gym floor, sizing up their prey, slamming their pool noodles against the floor in a bid of intimidation, the sound reverberating and multiplying around the high ceilings as more and more noodles slapped the floor in no describable rhythm, before the piercing shriek of the whistle blew, signaling the start of your mad dash to survive.
Oh and we had a jump rope test
I think I had a game similar to stinger that had to do with sharks. Sharks had a pool noodle and we had to run to the other side of the gym without us touching the pool noodle. If you did touch it you were forced to become a shark. Hated that game. Luckily after elementary I no longer had to take PE because they had another option to take karate instead (which I did)
Seeing scooter boards made me remember when I used to hold out one of my dog’s toys and have him drag me around on it when I was 10
Minecraft pig
13:56 the sit and reach test was SUCH a confidence booster for me in school because even though I was a fat kid, I'm really flexible so I was able to get a further reach than anyone. Then I grew up and learned that my hip/spine problems actually make me hyperflexible lol
Same here lmao.
SAME
I could never touch my toes without bending over so that test always made me feel bad. Turns out I have severe scoliosis lmao
@mrziiz6893 C curve or S curve? I have like a 15° C curve and the doctor said it made me more flexible, but only forward. I can't do back bends rip
@@SouthernGothicYT S curve, I have chronic back pain and there’s basically no seating positions that are comfortable for me lol
All I remember from PE is that they made me hate exercising as a whole. It was either competiton sports (and I hate competition and how everything has to be one) or comparing (as if 2 people are going to be exactly the same) I would much rather have had a math test than any PE-test, I would fail either, yes, but with the math test I at least wouldn't have to try to catch my breath trying to find the square root of 335.5.
I was well into adulthood, when I found out from exercise-videos on TH-cam that exercise doesn't have to be competitive, and it doesn't have to involve military-like behaviour, and that it's okay to take breaks. That whole revelation changed my perspective tbh
Being good at sports is genetics that’s probably why. I study astronomy but I used to play basketball for a team and sports has always been awesome for me since I’m athletic
@@Jakub680nah it just sounds like they had a bad PE teacher or curriculum
@@jonharrison3114 trust me, being involved in sports. Genetics plays a big factor in people liking it
nerd how do you not like sports i suck at them but theyre still really fun
I remember my elementary school had a “field day” but it was just us running the mile while our parents crowded around the track handing us water bottles and spraying us with water misters while we ran. As someone with asthma, I despised those days 💀
You got robbed
That’s not field day. That’s torture
Gym class was so intense back then because they knew boys would likely be drafted shortly after high school. They were training boys to be soldiers. The British Pathe video you showed is from around the Korean or Vietnam war (I read about it but can't remember which). If the new recruits are in great shape right off the bat, they military doesn't have to spend as much time/effort getting them ready to go to war
Huh, the more you know.
yup, now its mostly used to keep tabs on the general 'health' of the countries kids. at least in america with the whole pacer testing, 2x yearly height/weight tracking, situp/pushups testing, ect. (its literally pointless, everyone i knew would end up doing bare minimum, usually like 10 situps and 5 laps running lmfao)
That’s a actually really dark. Imagine just getting out of high school only to be drafted into a war where you could possibly die or experience some sort of life altering injury or witness someone else go through that.
@@PeterGriffin11Considering it was the Vietnam war, it’s highly likely that most did either day or were traumatized for the rest of their lives
@@mrziiz6893That’s really unfortunate.
In 6th grade my middle school got funding to build a track, and P.E. just devolved into walking around the track. They'd count the number of laps you made and that was the entirety of P.E.
Different school in 7th grade, their system was P.E. half the year, elective the other half. But they never switched so I just had band all year and never took a single P.E. class.
Weird, I had the same experience
That's hilarious. They paid for it and they were damn well gonna get their money's worth. (As someone who hated anything athletic - still do tbh - I would've loved a gym class that was just walking in circles.)
When we switched from online to hybrid PE was just us walking around the track too. It was so fun though because you'd just talk with your friends. And walking is excercise!!
I personally had excuses for not being in PE for two years of high school and wasn’t put into it for my third year either. The first year I had driver’s ed instead (we split the PE into half the year we take PE and half the year we take health) but we only actually had to do health for that year. Then, the second year I was taking some college classes and apparently when taking those I didn’t have to do PE either. Then for my third year, I was in the person arranging the schedule’s office and they didn’t even notice and when I pointed it out, they said “oh, well. Just don’t tell anyone”.
I WAS SO LUCKY :D
if only I could have gotten out of gym by being in band...I even got a varsity letter in marching band in high school yet still had to take gym class every single day (minus the day I had my honors/AP science lab)
Also I think my school made a fun game with the parachute. One student puts a ball on the chute, everyone collectively launches the ball, one student catches the ball. In the end the ball loader and ball catcher dive under the chute and whoever crawls out the other side first becomes the new ball loader. Rinse, repeat. It was like duck duck goose but with a catapult lol.
That was ours too!!
I think I did smth like this but I don’t remember
That was what our school did with it too! It was our only pe game
My P.E. experience was probably different than most because I took P.E. online. We would basically have some simple health lessons, guess how many calories were in different fast foods, watch sports movies, take online bmi tests, talk about mental health, watch yoga videos we were supposed to follow along with, and copy exercises. Our cameras were all off so no one could tell if we were doing the exercises or even listening.
idk if this was just my school, but sometimes during pe the coaches would bring out the CUPS. we had these sets of cups made for professional cup stacking and they would time us and see how fast we could stack and unstack cups. i also remember when adults weren’t looking me and my friends would put the cups on our feet and like walk around with them but that might just have been because we were weird playground roleplay kids. anyway those were the bomb and professional cup stacking is my favorite sport.
my school also did cup stacking. I was always kind of entranced by all of the different colors of cup stacking cups
The dude who announced the Pacer test also had other things, there was one for push-ups and sit-ups that's all I can remember. But for my school we ran all the way to the other side instead of the middle.
Ya, the running was the best of them all IMO, though that's not saying much. At least with the running test, you could purposely sack a "life" to take a small break by just walking at a normal speed for one "lap" and then getting back to where you started the next.
Yeah our school had one for sit-ups and push-ups, and they’d give you a bad grade if you didn’t score well. Kinda fucked up now that I think about it, as I was a chubby kid and it’s not like I could just instantly become fitter
My elementary/middle school also used the same sit-up/push-up audio CD. I distinctly remember someone saying that it sounded like he was burping when he said “up.” I couldn’t unhear it after that lol
Yep, same!
@@TheKoolKat4Ever I was the kid that pointed it out in my class. No one else seemed to agree. Glad I wasn't the only one to hear it.
why was using the scooter boards so embarrassing though especially when people were yelling at me to go faster LMAO also happy webkinz day!
I went to a private catholic elementary school and a public middle school. One had scooter boards, parachutes, field day, and weigh ins where the results were announced. While the other was usually basic pushups/other exercises and dodgeball. Both had the Pacer Test.
I genuinely cannot tell which is which
Childhood memories unlocking hahaha I ran over my fingers so dang much...trying not to cry in front of the whole class.
Hello, Gen alpha here and I can indeed confirm, scooters, rubber bolling balls, field day, and jump rope for heart are all still things I did at my elementary school.
I am happy this is easier to see then someone hating on gen alpha
Grew up in Germany during the early 2000s and we had those scooter boards, too! However, ours were made of wood, not plastic, and were quite heavy.
i am from germany too. my school also had those boards made of wood too. they actually where heavy especially for kids.
Was gonna comment the same thing. I feel like we also used them quite frequently 😊
As a late 00s kid who grew up mostly in the 2010s, I can confirm these were plastic for me. Kids liked forming trains out of them, with one kid pulling everyone forward. ❤
My school used to have the old heavy wooden ones and plastic ones.
I wish ours were heavy. They were so light, if your balance wasn't perfect or if you didn't have at least one foot on the ground they would tip over and launch themselves out from under you at 80 miles an hour
As someone with a chronic illness that went undiagnosed until my late teens, P.E was the absolute worst to me. Needless to say, getting things thrown at you and running around all the time when you have a very low pain threshold and endurance is not very fun.
My secondary school had two gym teachers and the one I had would always do this insane endurance test at the start of the year that always left everyone pretty much crippled for a week because of how sore our muscles would be
I was about to comment a very similar thing. PE was absolute HELL for me, between several undiagnosed health conditions and sensory intolorances I could not keep up with the other kids and I was miserable. Reading the comments I always forget, oh yeah most people didn't hate PE, but I still don't understand how.
Same here ! I just had trouble breathing, throwing stuff with strength, random pains... I remember one of my teachers just yelling at me to stop being a crybaby when I had asthma attacks but didn't know what they were yet
Why do PE teacher just hate kids ?!
Funnily enough PE was what led to my chronic illness finally being diagnosed… all thanks to my sit-and-reach score being off the charts😂
what do you have? im worried i have something similar
There’s PE teachers that are interested in helping kids with motor development and there’s PE teachers who I swear are actual sadists… There’s way too many of the second kind
idk if this was just something my school did, but whenever jump rope for heart came around, they would set up a huge obstacle course in the gym that was supposed to represent a heart. we literally just spent all 40 minutes of class running, crawling, and scooting through the obstacle course with the latest kidz bop in the background. AND IT WAS GLORIOUS. still wish they washed the jerseys once in a while though.
My school did that too. There was like an entire month of cardiovascular themed classes leading up to it to.
That is so cool I hope they still do that
We didn't have this but at my jump rope for heart days I remember getting really tired of just jumping so I asked the teachers if we could turn the corner of the gym into a dance space and they did, and they continued to have the dance square even after I left
YES i loved doing the cardio system! we would have red and blue balls to represent oxygenated blood and non-oxygenated blood, you’d have to carry your ball the whole obstacle and swap it out when you (the blood cell) reached the body part blood was pumping to and when you reached the lungs and received oxygen
My school did this. You'd be given a foam ball representing oxygen, and you're the blood cell and you're riding around on one of those scooter boards, and you're gym teacher is yelling at everyone to keep pace, because this is a heart, and will die if the "oxygen" doesn't get to the lungs in time. It was super fun, honestly.
I watched this with my brother who’s currently in fifth grade. Some, he remembered vividly but say they stopped using at some point (such as jump rope, stretch boards, etc) said they still use (pacer test, parachute, scooter boards) and some he had no familiar memories with (moon shoes, fake bowling, etc)
I haven't done a pacer test in almost 2 decades and those beeps still gave me war flashbacks
10:00 The FitnessGram™ Pacer Test is a multistage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues. The 20 meter pacer test will begin in 30 seconds. Line up at the start. The running speed starts slowly, but gets faster each minute after you hear this signal. [beep] A single lap should be completed each time you hear this sound. [ding] Remember to run in a straight line, and run as long as possible. The second time you fail to complete a lap before the sound, your test is over. The test will begin on the word start. On your mark, get ready, start.
Omigod I will get opted out! My healthy self and my sick self(I have a cold that drains my energy)
you don't have to survive until the end you just have to last long enough that you're in the middle of the bell curve.
Beep *10 seconds later* Beep *10 seconds later* Beep *10 seconds later* Beep *10 seconds later* Beep *10 seconds later* Beep *10 seconds later* Be-
Second video I have come across today where that is brought up and also typed out in a comment.... First one was the lastest Taskmaster episode(if you have not seen it, I recommend it, right here for free on YT!)
At my elementary school we used to do "Mission Impossible" obstacle courses. They'd set up balancing beams, tiny hurdles, ladder things you'd climb over a spooky decal of a shark, the whole ten yards, and dim the lights while playing the Mission Impossible theme. It was definitely a highlight of elementary gym class for me, made me feel like a super cool spy.
That sounds amazing!!!!
We basically had the same thing but themed around Indiana Jones complete with the theme song lol
That’s cute and fun!
Same! They usually were only for a short time but they were fun
Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like the kids who were really good at PE became either cops or PE teachers
Peaked in highschool energy definitely
Well yeah.. they did what they were good at the same as everyone else. If you aren't good at school paperwork then you were usually at least good at PE
Or joined the army?
Being a relatively easy class it shouldn’t be that hard to fail unless you are lazy af in my case since I’m relatively physically able it was the one of the few classes I got a high grade in
@@Witchmee apart from tech theater it was one of the few classes I got a B or A in
Half those stuff were in my PE class in elementary and middle school in the 90s! I found the rainbow parachute was like Gymboree in elementary school. The scooter boards in middle school was so much fun, we did obstacle courses! Also we didn’t have moon shoes, instead we had Skip Its! Also Jump rope for heart was a charity scam, my high school stopped doing it by sophomore year and they changed the fundraiser.
I am from Switzerland and we had scooter boards but we used them not so often. We also had like only 5 and during free activity, the fastest kids took them right away.
thanks for the outside US perspective👍❤
i sort of assumed this was something that only schools in the US did.
The pacer test (and by extension, the mile run) were my least favorite things about P.E., to the point where I just finally stopped doing P.E. in high school. Why was it so bad for me? Turns out, I have kneecaps that are too high, so any running is bad for them and makes me hurt extra (with the added bonus of them coming out of their sockets randomly!)
moonshoes at school? that's wild lol. we definitely didn't have that, but I got them for christmas in like 2004/5 and my disappointment was all the same
Same 😂 they were so horrible I felt so lied to by those commercials
I thought that it must’ve been so cool to have them!
A lot of the elementary school PE activities are meant to stimulate, and encourage a healthy growth of your fine motor skills, problem solving, and general mental growth. It’s also pretty good at keeping kids engaged when they’re rowdy in the morning, after lunch, or before school lets out.
What about in high school?
I remember being the one severely asthmatic kid in class during the pacer test. I was always the first one out and had to sit there for 10-20 minutes while all the REALLY competitive and athletic kids ran back and forth endlessly My gym teacher would force me to at least finish the first round because I honestly didn’t care enough put in even THAT level of effort
I remember those scooter boards. Some of the kids I know used to lay on their stomachs on the scooter board and pretend they’re crocodiles
Dream Jelly - I’m from the UK and we had the exact same thing as your ‘Pacer’ test but in secondary school. It was just named the ‘beep test’ and we all HATED it! The distance was from one end of the school hall to the other…. who thinks of such crazy stuff! 😅 Thanks for the brilliant videos - Ian ❤xx
Oh my word yes, this was literally a nightmare. It seemed it was designed to be near impossible to beat, even if you tried your hardest to do so. Also those P.E. hall floors were slippery at times.
the way i remember the p.e. coach telling us that we had to put our hands inside the scooter board instead of the part because they’d get smushed.. and the PACER TEST.. aside from me being a chubby kid in my elementary days who always got winded from it so easily, i remember falling one time and not even getting a score (pretty much a zero i think?)… good times.
sadly i didn’t get to use the parachute that much, but it was definitely a fun experience! as for field day, i think we had a kickball game by the end of the other games, but it was so so hot the ground literally felt like it was burning my bum.
God I was a chubby kid in middle school and it was dreadful. The worst part? I think I’d genuinely get the same score as my middle school me if I tried it now, even though I’ve lost weight. Lungs are fucked I think
That kid getting pulled under the parachute like someone from a horror movie @8:17 broke me lol
Omg I just commented about that 😂😂 he got dragged to hell and I’m cackling 😂😂😂
HELP
Idk if it happened at your school but a game similar to that involving the parachute happened at mine
It looked like the parachute got hungry and needed a snack. 🤣🤣🤣
What did that anyway?
In Australia we call the ‘pacer test’ the ‘beep test’ and everyone would take it SO seriously on the day (it also has a different voice and he says start level 1:1, start level 1:2 e.t.c before every run). Also we called the ‘school olympics’ an athletics carnival which was also a big deal, not just in our heads like everyone was pretty sporty but the RLY sporty kids were always hardcore, entering every running heat, long jump, high jump, shotput, and javelin in the hopes of getting a good enough time or distance/height to go to ‘zone’- where you’d compete against kids from other schools who were also the best (like American school olympics). And then if you won there you’d go to state, then national level. Having a title like zone or state winner was a huge deal and honestly still is, the event is huge for kids, they train for it and there’s even branded jackets and stuff that the organisers sell at said competitions (same system with swimming carnivals). But otherwise everything else (those weird wheely boards aside) is accurate. In Aus we’d play ‘cat and mouse’ with the parachute, which was essentially duck duck goose but under the parachute. Also we have our own weird games that I’d love to know if anyone else played, one that’s uniquely Australian in my opinion is ‘bin ball’. Bin ball was a fan favourite and was essentially dodgeball but there was a wheely bin (America doesn’t have those right?) behind each team and as well as aiming for people you aimed for the bin as hitting the bin meant winning, whether or not everyone in the other team was out or not.
>be in pe class
>teacher says we play basketball
>im excited
> teacher selecting what team has to wear unwashed sweaty bibs
>my team forced to wear bibs
>i no longer want to play basketball
I remember my elementary school had Jump Rope for Heart day where if you paid like 10 dollars, you got to leave class, bring snacks and drinks from home, and go jump rope outside for 3 hours. Granted, not many people actually jump roped and we just hung out with each other.
Also, my school never had Field Day, rather we had Fall Fest and Spring Fling where the school would rent a bunch of inflatables and sometimes carnival rides and have games too.
we had field day and fall fest, and of course the best one, summer fest, those were absolutely peak and i adored having all the booths with the carnival games and the inflatables and stuff. awesome sauce stuff!!!
Cool my school called it the spring fling too
I bought one of those scooter boards. I've ridden it around the house enough times to tell you they don't do well on carpet
I never thought about the fact that I could just buy one of my own as an adult :0
If the world drastically changes and I can actually have my own house I will definitely make sure there is no carpet
WHAT YOU CAN GET ONE FOR YOUR OWN AMUSEMENT????
They do okay on carpet, just not carpet with any sort of pile. My school didn't have wood floors.
JUMP ROPE FOR HEART. oh my goodness memories have been unlocked
In elementary school at the end of field day the local fire department would come and spray their water trucks into the air and let it fall down on us. One of my best memories
What I really hated about the pacer test was that there were to many kids on the line. The first part it was incredibly difficult to touch the line since everyone was so squished together.
Shoutout to /r/DreamJelly. Not much activity now but wanted to plug for the community
Got it
I was manufactured in 2001, and my school never had the moon shoes. We did, however, have a rock wall we weren't allowed to climb and occasionally went to a portable to watch a video of some dude spreading germs onto a whole dozen of donuts. That little roll out TV cart had many a scary video on it.
wait i think we wstched the same video, the one where the germs sang while falling down the sink??? 😭😭
@@twotruckslyrics yep, that singing haunts my nightmares 💀
@@Lanayrulian oh my gosh it wasnt a hallucination from kindergarten 😭 thats lived in my head for yearssss
is this it? th-cam.com/video/rYnz2bv56LU/w-d-xo.html
when i was in elementary school they thought it was a brilliant idea to put the gym outside on the pavement... in the scorching florida sun. doing the pacer test in 100 degrees fahrenheit with limited water breaks is a different kind of stress. if it was raining outside when we had to go out for pe, we would all huddle into the storage room and watch these green screen video things where the host would yell to run in place to escape the jungle or whatever location for like 20 minutes and that was all we did. unsurprisingly, everyone loved it because it was so easy and we would just shuffle in place for a while
My Florida elementary school didn't have a gym either. We did all our outdoor activities on the basketball court or the bus circle.
Oh, the ludicriously hot Florida subtype of Pacer test with pavement running, my beloathed. Although my elementary school's choice of weird videos when it rained would be some Cirque de Soleil, which was incredibly trippy and still is to reflect back on.
At least the Pacer test had alright music for when you were worn out, though it can't compare to a certain spoof from a certain MMO I've been obsessed with lately. Obligatory Pacesetter mention here.
My elementary kids now love those weird brain break videos though.
my florida school had literally everything outside for PE 😖
i did those videos during covid, and we had to record ourselves doing the exercise as proof we did it 💀
Born in 2004, I'm jealous all we did was dodgeball or play on playground. We occasionally did bowling ball but most days it was a dodgeball game. I was good at dodging. I even stayed last place just dodging in one game but lost when opposing team caught ball I had to throw back.
We didn't have beep pacer test but instead mile run. We did to sit up and push ups for pacer test. I sucked at these.
I didn't had a pacer test, but I remember one teacher (who was a retired athlete and a nurse, dude was so good and strict I lost 5 kilos under him in 2 months) that had a form of "punishment" that he (and other sport teachers I remember) called "self-exit" (the actual word for it). It was to run to each line of the gym and back to the first one, until you did a whole gym run. It was called "one self exit". When we were particularly energetic, he would give 5-8 of these and we had to complete in 10 minutes tops. Like, we didn't had to actually run every lap because every kid had different needs (I myself being on medicine that inhibited my sense of tiredness had to be held back by him if he saw I was running too much) but we had to do it in that window of time and the first ones which finished the "self exit" could rest until the last one finished. Then we would start PE.
I will never forget the smell of those jerseys. Such a distinct smell beyond that of just sweaty kid
My friends and I used to pull each other around on the scooter boards with jump ropes and then launch each other across the gym at top speed lol. It actually was a pretty good workout
Oh dear God, I saw the parachute and terrible jump ropes in the thumbnail and was TRIGGERED. Here’s something to blow your mind-I’m 36, so I went to school in the 90s. We played the exact. Same. Crap. 😂
I love that, what were the 2000s if not just a continuation of the 90s but with more low cut jeans?
@@dreamyjelliesI was in elementary from 2015-2020 … the 2010s are the exact same! (Minus the moon jumpers!)
I was in elementary from 2013-2021(JK-Junior Kindergarten, kids were 3-4, play, Senior Kindergarten, ages 4-5, mainly play)
7th grade I was in middle school then I went to Catholic school where you had elementary JK-gr 8 so I got a continuation of elementary in 2022-2023
5:05 I don't necessarily remember using these at school but definitely used them during game time in kids church back in the day, and they were Hella fun!
My elementary school had a full “gymnastics” course, which pretty much just an obstacle course with climbing structures and a balance beam. My middle school had an archery unit, and even a canoeing week since the school was near a creek.
as an Australian, I can confirm that my school as a kid had the scooter board thingys. Your partner just got unlucky I guess :(
OMG thanks for mentioning my video! truly nobody talks about boomerang but it was such a unique viewing experience compared to other channels at the time?? i love your content btw! i've been watching since the claire's video :D
Of course, you deserve a mention! And omg that’s so cool, thank you for watching!!
2 of my favorite nostalgia youtubers interacting I think my heart might just explode
Pacer test in Australia is formally called the ‘beep test’ because it goes ‘beep’
Same here in Poland!
same in canada
also in netherlands
Most creative Australian
Same in Britain, and seemingly everywhere else judging by the replies.
I remember using all that equipment when I was in elementary school. I loved field day as a kid, it was the only time we got out of school on purpose for fun at the park.
I think the coolest part of my elementary school’s field day was the fact that the local firemen would bring the fire truck and spray it up into the air and onto everyone. I also remember the one time when I was in fourth grade and sprayed sunscreen into my eyes😭
My elementary school years were from '96 to '02 and we had an annual week of dancing. We did line and square dancing, the chicken dance, the hokey pokey... way funner than sport ball. Badminton, volley ball and dodge ball were also top tier fun days. Our field day we competed against the other elementary schools in the district and plastic medals were awarded. I won the 500 meter dash one year and felt like a top athlete for a day. My kids don't even know what dodge ball is, but they still do the parachute and the scooters.
Did your schools do the achey breaky heart and macarena? Those always seemed to be staples until the Cha Cha Slide became a big thing.
Aussie here, and I defs had the scooter boards at my school, but they were mostly relegated to after-school care rather than PE. I assume they came about from the wheel dolly’s used to help move heavy stuff. Someone saw those and thought “if I make that colourful and cheap to produce, kids will eat it up” and they were right.
omg i forgot about those scooter boards, unlocked a few memories right there
How does one forget about scooter boards
The PACER test gave me the first inkling that I might not be breathing like the other kids (I was diagnosed with exercise induced asthma later). No one else made a horrible grating, wheezing sound after they collapsed against the wall after finally missing a beep. Nor did their legs kind of turn a concerning bluish color. I would force myself to keep going because you had to be able to do a certain amount to get an A and I was just a tiny little bit grade obsessed. I loved the activities, though, like the scooters, the parachute, the bouncy balls, etc. Our field day was like what you described with the elementary olympics but without competing with other schools. The classes in each grade would compete and I think the winning class got a pizza party or something.
I'm an Old Person (grade school was late 80s/early 90s), and it warms my heart & makes my knuckles twitch that the scoot-seats are still a thing.
I work at an elementary school, and can tell you with certainty that 90% of these things are still used today. I was SHOOK to see those jumpropes with the like "beads" still in the PE storage room and the rolly things and then shook again to see them USING them. They still do stack cups, but not fitnessgram or square dancing. The only new thing ive seen added (which only three schools in the district even have) are mini rock climbing walls. They still do 5120+, the mile, and the mileage club. It was wild to see 14 years later (I was in 5th grade in 2010)
Them not doing fitness pacer tests is the schools trying to right a wrong
At my elementary school's field day, we had to sign up for the events/races (I'd always sign up for the 100yd Dash every year even though I always got last...). If you were in the top 5, you'd get a little colored paper of what you placed. On the day of, we'd all sit in a rectangle area and watch through each race. It was a great time for all day talking with your friends as you waited for the races to cheer your friends on.
And we'd end the event with a water balloon fight and popsicles! It truly was a time.
I remember the pacer test beep was a twinkely high pitched beep. And yeah there was usually only one kid that got even close to level 20. There was no shame in tapping out early. Last I heard they dropped the pacer test a few years ago as it was classified as a form of torture. That might have been just a meme but I took it at face value because it is was torture
I remember the pacer test, and ive never heard the end. Every time we did it in class, no matter the school, there would always be at least one kid that pushed so far they threw up when they tried to get water. I remember 2 kids in 3rd grade running the hell out of it, and it was around the 84th mark where they finally tapped out. To this day that's the longest ive ever seen someone last, it was incredible
I remember in elementary school we got the scooters banned. We would spend every class with one person on a scooter holding one end of a jump rope while another kid would wip them around the gym while dragging them with the other end of the jump rope. It got to the point where we one kid would be slinging a line of like 4 kids all on there own scooters each attached by a jump rope. They were banned because some kid got swung full force into a desk that was for some reason in the gym. Best times of my life 100%
oh yeah anonymously I'll say in middle school when we did the sit-up/crunch thing I lost control and continually farted throughout like half of it while the whole class laughed. it was formative.
Probably the weirdest memory I have of elementary school PE was when for a couple day, they set up this giant obstacle course that is supposed to replicate the way the human heart works. You would scoot around the floor, go through large tubes, and climb through the heart and stuff. It was honestly some of the most fun days in class, and it definitely did teach me about how the heart works back then,, but I could not tell you any of that information now if I tried ;-;
Damn American schools of the 2000s sound like so much more fun! In Germany, we also had a "field day" however we had to do more traditional sports like track running, jumping and throwing a discus. We also had something akin to the pacer test, however we had to run for 30 mins straight. That was it, literally just running, sprinting even, and I hated every second of it lol
Wait a second, your field day was rad. 😂 I'm from Canada and ours was always lowkey trying to find the next Olympians with long jumps, high jumps, disc throwing, short and long track races, etc. It was one of those days that all the jock kids LOVED and made everyone else feel inferior.
My elementary school had something called Scooter Highway. My gym teachers would have a theme, and make a town around it. There was usually an “ice-skating rink”, a TV watching station, a car wash, and a spinning rope station. We would even make our own drivers licenses and glue on a picture of ourselves (we would draw dots with markers on our licenses to show which station we went to during the day). Such great memories, holy crap
Not to brag, but at my school, we went to an actual bowling alley every class during the bowling unit in gym class. I know, very fancy.
This brought back so many memories for me! I loved playing with the scooter boards and parachute but I never really liked PE that much. It was always where I got yelled at and picked on the most cuz I’m neither athletic nor coordinated. And I remember my elementary school PE did this thing where they would put us in different groups that we would be in for the entire year and switch between different activities with our groups. And I remember when we had partner activities, no one wanted to be my partner, especially the snarky girls. There was one time when volleyball was one of our activities and my group had four girls and four boys, so we could easily do a girl team and boy team and the snarky girls in my group made me be on the boys team, while there was a boy on their team, and they easily coulda just done girls vs boys. Does that make ANY sense to you? And I remember on our field days, we would rotate between different activities and the older kids would put colors on our score cards, yellow being the lowest and blue being the highest, and I always got a ton of yellows! And of course, I was ALWAYS the first one out on the PACER.
we used to always play meteor ball, it was like dodgeball but with no boundaries and it was pure chaos. especially chaotic when you have eye of the tiger blasting over the speakers and the kids get way too hyped
My school had a roller skating unit where we skated in circles around the gym for half an hour! We could even limbo under a bungee cord strapped between two vertical poles.
I just now realized what that parachute thing is for while watching this video. I think it's like a children's version of the rope some gyms have, which is basically just a big heavy rope to swing around. That's why they have you wave it around before lifting it up to go underneath, it's just a lighter and more fun version of the rope
We did Cup Stacking in my Elementary School. I also had to do the dreaded Presidential Fitness Test throughout Elementary School.
One of the schools I went to also had cup stacking was very weird but fun, at that same school we also played marbles
@@waffleson45 Mrs. Sutton and Mrs. Waugh never played marbles with us, but we'd bowl. The fourth and fifth graders got to go to the bowling alley for a field trip. They even had four pound rubber bowling balls (to train us with) and replica bowling pins so we can bowl in the carpeted gym. We'd take turns setting up the pins in their specially marked places. We had 8 lanes marked with some Velcro like tape that hooked into the carpet. They even made "gutters" with the Velcro tape on each end (that is why we had 8 lanes).
I remember when I was in 4th or 5th grade I my first panic attack after the pacer test and then 20 minutes later I had another one during dismissal. Fun times
Oh man, Jump Rope for heart! I remember doing this every year and it took until my 5th grade year to realize that the amount of jumps I did did not in fact mean anything, and the prizes were for the kids who sold stuff from the magazine TuT
My school was always so against bringing out the scooters, but we were all SO obsessed with them. The gym would erupt into cheers every time they were sitting out as we walked into class