Lab 6: Easter is Fun!!

On April 8, our theme was Easter. This was appropriate due to its a catholic school and Easter is right around the corner. Our group the Wild and Crazy Kids were responsible for the cafeteria on the last day of labs. I brought some coloring books and a large Chinese checkers set. Both groups enjoyed the books. I also had fun teaching the children how to play Chinese checkers since its was my first time playing as well. In the beginning it was just us and the older kids. Our ears were very popular as was my tie. Creating a friendly environment by getting dressed to correspond with the days activity is very crucial. I learned this through the six weeks we've spent at St. Mary's. With the older kids they are not as open, but it just took some time for them to open up and begin to have fun. We used i time effectively i felt since we got to talk to them. After the older children left the younger and more energetic children came in. For them we set up a game for them to play. We made two teams on opposite sides. In the middle of the two groups was a basket with eggs and inside the eggs were holding skills. We explained when the music went on the children would begin hopping to the middle, grab one egg, and perform the skill back to their teams hulla-hoop. We made the game more interesting making the children feel they were helping out the Easter bunny collect his eggs and involving some skills. After being couped up in the cafeteria the whole time it was fun to get out and go to the gymnasium. In the gym we got a line of girls waiting to jump rope. It was amazing to watch as young as they are they are very athletic. There was one girl who jump 120 times, which i felt was amazing since i couldn't get passed thirty. Over the time we spent at St. Mary's I am very happy that i got to spend my time there and learn so much.

Lab Five: Pre-k Off the Wall

This weeks lab we spent our time with the pre-k. I must say that these children are some of the most active children ive seen they love to run around and have fun. First we spent time inside their class room playing with toys trying to get more involved and getting more comfortable with this new environment. As I began playing with the students they were hitting plastic colored fish with hammers or anything they could get their hands on. I began to ask them to hit certain colors and wanted them to tell me how many they could hit timed. The children loved this cause I incorporated a task with their previous game. Once they were all wilded up the teacher asked us to read a bit to calm them down before snack. After snack our group took the children into the gym to play games. We choose to use a variation to Zanny Zoo. What we did was make a big circle with lilpads adn had each student stand on one. We would pick one Student to go to the middle and pick a card and then everyone had to re-enact what animal on the card. This was a hit for the children cause they began to really get into pretending they were animals. After a while only a few Students were around so I began to play tag were one of us was the cheetah and the rest had to run . You could hear roars comming from the children pretending their a cheeta chasing you around. For this week i felt the program we ran was suitable for their age and made it another fun day.

Lab Three: The Endless Bucket(Superheroes)

For week three my group agreed upon using the endless bucket game to get the kids more invovled in the theme. We did create many different cards that we felt the kids were going to enjoy because they involved certian things that superheroes did. Our group went first so after setting up the gym I called all the children in. They were a bit disruptive at the fact that they had to be superheroes again, so i told them they could pretend to be super villians giving them that chance to become something different. This worked very well and got the children to stop yelling about not wanting to play. I felt I explained the game well and did a good performance for taking charge and start off the game. As the game went on many kids were unable to read the skills on the cards so between reading and running around with them things began to go fast. After a while i told the children to freeze and told them to jump from station to staion instead of running. I tried to incoporate all the nessesary skills needed for that day. Overall I thought that the children enjoyed our game and are becoming more confortable with us.

Lab Two: Zany Zoo goes Crazy

The second session was different than the first since we had games for the children to play. Our group had the Zany Zoo which seemed easy, but was a bit difficult to teach children. The kids today were very energetic and I knew we were going to have a had time trying to get their attention. When our group was up I took charge and got the kids together. From here I told the kids what were playing. From here i split them up into group and seperated them. I found thisw to be my down fall because I had children all over the gym and i was in the middle trying to explain the game. I had help from my other teammates, but instead i should i explained the game when all the children were together and used my teammates as the demonstration. I also was trying to get their attention a lot since the talking got loud. After talking to my lab instructor he game me some advice to take a breath and not get thrown off trying to get their total attention. Once the game began I found that the kids really enjoyed it. It went on for a long time and the main reason i thought it worked so well was because all of the teammates were with thwe children trying to get them to make animal noises and include everyone and make their time with this game fun. Overall I myself have things to work on, but as a team I thought that our game was great. Once the game was over we went to play with the pre-schoolers. The children are very smart and like to have fun with anything. I found them to be more coroperative than the older children. This was good since we took them into the gym were andrew and I set up a Obsticale course for them. We used all different skills like hopping, crawling, rolling, jumping. I thought that this was a good way to see how developed their skills were and I learned a lot from seeing the older kids and then seeing what pre-schoolers were able to do.

Lab One: It all begins

I have worked at a camp before as a C.I.T and as a counciler. I must admit I was still a bit worried about being in a new setting and having trouble my first time with the children. We started off with some tag games involving different variations to make the kids use different motor skills. After a while the children became restless and were in need of a change of games. A few of use took to the children and tried games we thought that were age appropriate. The games we used were good and kept their interest for a while. I my self chose a game called crab tag. This game was a bit difficult to perform for the children because they felt that performing the crab walk was to hard, as it may have been. I choose that game because i felt that the crab walk was a fairly easy skill to perform. I now know that they like tag games and instead of trying to make the game more difficult i could slow it down by making the skill a bit eaiser such as a bear crawl or changing the game total such as blob tag. I felt I had control of the children during the time I spent trying to explain the game, but i do need to work on my voice and how I display it. Later in the session we spent time with the same children in the basement were I began a losing streak to colin and luke in "Go Fish". The boys had a dispute over a game and was soon forgotten after we all talked about what happened and soon after the kids were playing again. For the first time I am having a better sense of the children and more confident in my self.

Physical Education Must keep Dodgeball

In past years, states have been uncomfortable with allowing dodge ball in their schools. Dodge ball is one of many sports that can be used to help students safely and creatively, if thought through carefully. The sport of dodge ball has been labeled as unfit to allow students to play because of students getting hurt or bullying. These are excuses to ban a sport that I feel are un-reasonable.
At times this sport is dangerous if the rules are not followed. Also I have seen many other games where children will bully others. It is not a reasonable way to think that throwing a ball to get another child out is bullying if that’s a part of the game. If kids pick on some of the slower kids in class during tag is that not bullying? To consider that dodge ball is simple a bullying sport is a poor way to support a ban on it. It is up to the teacher to make this sport comfortable for the kids to play. Teachers can use gater foam balls instead of the typical red dodge ball. In my own experience playing with children at a YMCA camp, we have seen minimal injuries, and also kids seem to have no problems being scared of the ball. Some variations can be implemented for students to play to make it less dangerous, bounce dodge ball (where the ball must be bounced before it hits someone) is still fun and makes the game safer by slowing down the velocity of the ball.
Dodge ball can help students have fun in their classes and at the same time fit the criteria for a safe and healthy lesson plan. We are the teachers of tomorrow who must keep a sport such as dodge ball around for a fun way to keep children healthy and safe in Physical Education.

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