Physical Education

About this course

Eighth grade covers the widest range of activities in the whole course. Team sports include basketball, soccer, volleyball, flag football, ultimate frisbee, softball and baseball, kickball, and team handball, each broken into its core skills, with additional lessons on game intelligence, building a game plan, officiating and integrity, communication, leadership, and responding to adversity. Individual activities run from running, swimming, cycling, jump rope, and gymnastics through track and field sprints, jumps and throws, orienteering, hiking, rock climbing and bouldering, archery, martial arts taught as discipline and self-control rather than fighting, and yoga postures used for flexibility and breathing. The fitness units work through the components of fitness, the FITT principle, SMART goal setting and fitness journaling, progressive overload, exercise intensity zones, agility and coordination, strength training basics, recovery, and overtraining.

Health and nutrition covers macronutrients and micronutrients, hydration, food labels, sports nutrition, and meal planning, then a lesson on eating disorders that treats them as serious medical conditions rather than vanity, one on sleep, one on stress and its physical effects, and a direct substance-avoidance lesson covering alcohol, tobacco and vaping, marijuana, and the misuse of stimulants and steroids, with a written exercise in practicing refusal in three realistic scenarios. The unit ends with your student drafting a personal health plan. There is no sex education in the eighth grade course; the health content is nutrition, sleep, stress, substances, and safety.

There are 108 lessons in nine units of twelve. Units seven through nine return to fitness, team sports, and individual activities, and while the lessons are all separately written, a handful of individual-activity topics such as hiking, swimming, yoga, and martial arts do come around twice, so treat the second pass as reinforcement. Each lesson is planned for about 35 minutes with seven minutes of introduction, seventeen minutes of activity, and a seven-minute review, and each ends with a ten-question quiz that grades itself. The reading is around 250 to 460 words with headings and bulleted technique lists. A note on two lessons parents often ask about: the yoga lessons are explicit that the postures are being borrowed as physical exercise while keeping the mind on Christ, and pair the flow with Scripture rather than Eastern meditation. The archery lesson gives real technique but is written so a student without a bow can research a local club instead. Otherwise equipment stays ordinary, with a ball, a jump rope, a mat, and access to trails, water, or a park as the main needs.

What the course covers

• Fitness components, FITT, progressive overload, SMART goals, and recovery
• Basketball, soccer, volleyball, flag football, ultimate, softball, handball
• Game plans, officiating, team communication, leadership, and mental toughness
• Running, swimming, cycling, jump rope, gymnastics, and track and field
• Rock climbing, archery, martial arts discipline, and yoga postures
• Macronutrients, micronutrients, food labels, and sports nutrition
• Eating disorder awareness, sleep, and stress management
• Alcohol, tobacco, vaping, marijuana, steroids, and refusal strategies
• Static, dynamic, and PNF stretching plus balance and proprioception
• Camping, survival basics, orienteering, star navigation, fishing, and birding

What your student will be able to do

• Apply progressive overload and the FITT principle to a written training plan
• Play six or more team sports at a functional level and captain a game plan
• Complete a fitness test battery and journal results against SMART goals
• Build and hold a personal stretching routine including PNF techniques
• State clear reasons to refuse alcohol, nicotine, and drugs and practice saying no
• Navigate by map, compass, and stars, and camp with basic survival preparation

Scope and sequence

All 9 units of Physical Education for Grade 8, in the order they are taught.

Every lesson, by title

All 108 lesson titles are listed here — nothing is withheld until you download. Open a unit to read its contents.

One whole lesson, exactly as it comes

This is a real lesson taken from the middle of the course — the teaching text, the practice, the homework, and the first three quiz questions with their answers. It is not a marketing excerpt.

What you will need

Drawn from the materials named across all 108 lessons of this course. Most families already own most of it.