What Is it All About?
Families work collaboratively to complete on-the-spot physical activities assigned to playing cards, in order to deal as many cards as possible within the given time during a family night.
Why Do It?
Being active with your family is fun! Pick a card and work together to complete the assigned activities while building your fitness and having fun.
How Do We Do It?
Families team up and assign an individual activity, representative of each component of fitness (i.e., cardiovascular endurance, flexibility, strength) to each suit of a deck of playing cards; for example, hearts = bench step-ups (cardio), clubs = wall sprints (cardio), spades = V-sit (strength), diamonds = hamstring stretch (flexibility). Consider determining these as a large group and displaying them for families to reference. Size of group varies on the number of available decks of playing cards.
Groups receive a deck of playing cards and students take turns turning over cards and the entire family performs the activity together.
The family challenge is to deal all of the cards and complete all activities as quickly as possible.
Aces are bonus cards. If a family member turns over an ace, all other activities do not need to be completed.
What Else Do We Need?
7–8 decks of cards
How Do We Get Creative?
Increase or decrease the intensity of the activities.
Where possible, provide a picture of each activity.
Provide families with healthy snacks and water following the activity.