Skip Navigation

PowerPlay!

Loading Content

Out:

Students push their limits and discover how their bodies react to a variety of physical challenges in PowerPlay! This monumental, three-story installation lets students leap up and down different levels of a forty-foot tower that provides access to other areas of the exhibit.

Physical challenges include cardiovascular, balance, flexibility, and upper and lower body strength activities. Students can take it to the next level by tracking their heart rates and strength improvements, rating their experiences, and comparing performances—like real fitness athletes!

The lessons and resources presented here can be used before and after your students visit the Children's Museum of Houston. Even if you are unable to visit the Museum, these activities can be used in any classroom to explore health and fitness topics with students. Five activities are designed to be conducted prior to visiting the museum, and five after the museum visit.

Ideas for Teachers Without Access to the Museum

  1. Plan a special "field day" at your school. Prior to the event, conduct the Pre-visit lessons. After the event, use the Post-visit lessons.

  2. Create a classroom fitness plan that provides one month of activities. Help students plan a calendar with different fitness activities for each day.

  3. Participate in the President's Challenge Program for fitness.

The PowerPlay exhibit was made possible by a Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA), from the National Institutes of Health, and is a partnership among Baylor College of Medicine and the Children's Museum of Houston.

Complete Teacher Guide

Thumbnail Image for PowerPlay: Fitness and Physical Activity Teacher Guide

PowerPlay: Fitness and Physical Activity

PowerPlay fitness lessons promote student understanding, positive attitudes, and healthy behaviors related to physical activity and diet.

Individual Lessons: PowerPlay

Thumbnail Image for Activity and Exercise

Activity and Exercise

Students jump over a rope in different ways and measure their performance over time. They also predict their levels of “perceived exertion” during physical exercise. 

View this lesson Download PDF
Thumbnail Image for Body Strength

Body Strength

Students learn that muscles need exercise to stay strong, repetition of exercises builds strength and endurance, and that different activities improve cardiovascular health, strength, flexibility and balance.

View this lesson Download PDF
Thumbnail Image for Heart Rate and Exercise

Heart Rate and Exercise

Students measure their prior to conducting a variety of physical activities. After conducting the activities, they measure and compare their post-exercise heart rates to their resting heart rates.

View this lesson Download PDF
Thumbnail Image for Gravity and Muscles

Gravity and Muscles

Students learn about the body’s center of gravity, and how the body adjusts to the force of gravity to remain balanced.

View this lesson Download PDF
Thumbnail Image for Walk the Talk

Walk the Talk

Students learn that physical and mental activities can be improved with practice by repeatedly walking while reciting a poem.

View this lesson Download PDF
Thumbnail Image for Human Body Ratios

Human Body Ratios

Students practice estimating and measuring in metric units, and investigate the concepts of ratio and proportion as they relate to features of the human body. 

View this lesson Download PDF
Thumbnail Image for Body Mass Index (BMI)

Body Mass Index (BMI)

Students investigate how Body Mass Index (BMI) values are calculated, and how the information can be used in research.

View this lesson Download PDF
Thumbnail Image for Water in Your Body

Water in Your Body

Students learn how much water our bodies need each day, how it is lost, and that the water we lose must be replaced.

View this lesson Download PDF
Thumbnail Image for Food: What Is a Calorie?

Food: What Is a Calorie?

Students learn that people derive their energy from the food that they eat; that this energy is measured in a unit called a calorie; and that different foods provide different amounts of energy.

View this lesson Download PDF
Thumbnail Image for Serving Sizes

Serving Sizes

Students estimate serving sizes of different foods and compare their estimates to serving size information provided on food package nutrition labels.

View this lesson Download PDF

Related Video and Slide Presentations

Thumbnail Image for Bone Loss with Space Exploration Video

Bone Loss with Space Exploration

Susan A. Bloomfield, PhD, FACSM, speaks about bone structure and different kinds of bone, the causes of bone loss during space exploration, and strategies for slowing or counterbalancing the process of bone loss, in space and on Earth.

Thumbnail Image for Maintaining Muscle Mass in Space

Maintaining Muscle Mass in Space

Kenneth M. Baldwin, PhD, explains how and why muscles change during spaceflight, why this is important, and what can we do to limit muscle atrophy in space and on Earth.

Video Digital Slide Set
Thumbnail Image for Benjamin Levine: Staying Fit in Space Presentation

Staying Fit in Space (podcast)

Benjamin D. Levine, MD, researches exercise programs to learn how astronauts can maintain fitness while living and working in microgravity (podcast with lessons and more).

Grade(s)
K-2

Funding

Science Education Partnership Award, NIH

Science Education Partnership Award, NIH

PowerPlay
Grant Number: R25RR022697