Superheros visit St. Mary's!!

At our last lab we learned that dressing up in costume really helps when teaching. Obviously were not going to do this all the time, but it helps in getting the kids engaged. For example, when we were playing tag, it ended up being chase the super heros around. The kids were sweating and we were sweating from running around so much, but they were faving fun and being active. I was in the Pre-K this week and you could even see a difference in the class room, all the kids were like batgirl come play with me or superman come color with me. So you had a bunch of kids trying to get your attention at one time. We didn't have alot of time in the gym, but the kids loved the obstacle course that dan set up! I feel like I have learned a lot from working at St. Mary's and I happy that they let us come back every year it's very nice of them!

Harry Harlow's Monkey Experiement, comfort v. food

In this video it shows Harry Harlow's monkey experiment, where the wire "mother" has food and the cloth mother does not. In his experiment it showed although the wire mother had food the baby monkey perfered the cloth mother. This is because babies look for comfort and safety with in their mom. This goes to show that comfort overrides everything else in a babies relationship with its mother.

All the pregnant ladies!

In class each group got to perform a skit that they made which pertained to a chapter that we were assigned. My group did a parody of Beyonce's All the Single Ladies and changed it to a song about the affects of drugs on babies during pregnancy, dubbin the song.. All the pregnant ladies. At first I was really nervous and so was my group, but once everyone started laughing it became less stressful. It was a lot of fun and I show the video to all my friends!

To Infinity and Beyond!

Toy Story came to Saint Mary's last week! The kids worked on the skills of dribbling and kicking and we got to play out side since it was such a nice day out. My group played the game kick ball. We ended up having one of us be all time pitcher so the fighting over the ball would stop. However, I think everything went very well and it was nice to get outside. I think its harder though to get kids to want to play your game, when they can go play on the play ground, so we didn't have as much kids in our group as we usually do. Which is fine, it teaches us to adapt to different situations.

Easter at St. Mary's!

St. Mary's celebrated easter as my 201 class lead the after school program in a varity of games focusing on catching and throwing. A lot of the kids were very mature in their throwing skills which was a little suprising, but catching skills needed some work. I lead a dance with hula hoops and I thought it went pretty well, but it was hard to keep them focused on what I was doing.

Dinosaurs in St. Mary's

The children at St. Mary's learned about Dinosaurs as they participated in a variety of games. My group had the Pre-K, so we read them the book Dinofours and Land Before Time. We played some games and colored pictures of our favorite characters from the new TV series, Dinosaur Train. When we moved to the gym, they ran like T-Rex's and played Dinosaur Tag! We also played some partner tag which helps kids learn names of fellow students. My game was an obstacle course, where the children had to carry lost dino eggs (bean bags) back to Mrs. P's nest. They were jumping on rocks to avoid the lava, crawling through the dark cave and leaping over rivers. Luckily, all the eggs were delivered saftly back to their nest!!! I thought the game went very well and we had one of the older kids come and join in on the fun.

Growth and Development

Motor Development on Prezi

A look into motor development

Physical Education can defined through health related fitness and performance related. It is geared toward the teaching trough the physical to children. Two goals of Developmental Physical Education are skill acquisition and cognitive learning. Some activities to enhance the skills acquisition are locomotive such as walking, running, and leaping. For more of a cognitive approach manipulation skills such as throwing, catching and rolling a ball are good. We could work also on stability through axial movements such as twisting and bending or static/dynamic movements such as dodging and rolling.

Children learn at different rates and three components, learner, task and environment are what lead to the child's development as a whole. Therefore group appropriateness activities, which are based upon the chronological order and grade level of the class are not always beneficial to the students. More activities that focus an a variety of individual appropriate activities which are geared toward a students learning phase and skills are more useful.

We must take all this into consideration and help our students who are being attacked by three major critical issues. Obesity which is sadly rising quickly. Increase in-school and community violence among children and early puberty.

Winter Olympians at Saint Mary's!!

The children at Saint Mary's had an oppertunity to show off their Olympic skills as my PED 201 class led them in an array of games geared toward that theme. We worked on the locomotor skills of galloping, hopping and running. While others taught a game the rest of the class obverved different children and their locomotor skills along with your teaching abilitys. I need to work on projecting my voice and gettin the kids more excitied about the game. Everyone had a great time and the kids worked up a good sweat showing us their skills.

Fun at Saint Marys!

Tag in Phys Ed

One of the highly controversal games listed in the game hall of shame was the beloved game of Tag. Yes, there are some tag games that involve eliminating students by making them sit down after getting tagged by the "it" person. That also leads to less participation and activity for students. However, tag can be performed in so many variations that there is no need to play elimination style tag. Any good Physical Educator should be able to quickly think of different ways to play tag.

If I were to bring this into the class room I would first make the playing feild for the tag game rather small. This is because, if you play it using the whole gymnasium then you get the kids who stand on the out skirts or hide in the corner not being super active. Therefore, if you make the space rather small then the kids have to be activily moving around and be aware of other students at the same time to avoid bumping into eachother. Simple tag games such as Partner Tag can keep kids very active. Each student gets a partner and one of them is declared "it." The other partner gets a 3 sec head start to run away, after the 3 secs the "it" partner chases after the other. Once they tag the other person they must, do jumping jacks, spin around, push ups or any other form of activity then chase after the other partner. The game goes back and forth and ends when the teacher decides. Having a partner also cuases them to be more active because they are focused on one person and chasing only that person. You can also make your students do different kinds of locomotion, such as skipping, hopping or galloping to work on their skills. Another variation is have partners tag eachother with a certain body part, like the elbow or foot, so they are able to learn different body parts.

Therefore, I believe tag can be active, benificial and used to learn if the correct tag game is selected.

PED 201 Lab 1

Wednesday was our first official lab at Saint Mary's school. We first began by playing tag games with the kids. I noticed that the children really didn't listen very well and it was very hard to get them to sit down. At first the kids were really into the tag games. However, as soon as they started to get tired or bored, you started seeing kids sitting on the side lines or hiding behind the matt on the wall. Tag games such as Chinese temple tag or freeze tag where fairly easy for the 2nd graders and younger to understand. As soon as we tried to play blob tag, a partner tag game, the kids didn't seem to understand and we had to quickly switch the game. After a few games, almost none of the children were participating in the tag games. Therefore, my group asked them what they would like to do and they said "Duck, Duck, Goose!" So we played duck, duck, goose until they went down stairs to play board games. Down stairs, I played chess with a Kindergatner named Sage. I was actually suprised with how much he understood of the game and he actually had to explain some of the rules to me. I thought that was really awesome that he was so knowledgable at such a young age. However, after awhile he would make up new rules as the game went along to make sure he won, which was funny. I helped another kid, Anthony, make paper airplanes. Which is also, when I learned the rule that were not suppose to throw paper airplanes unless it's in the gym and only if it's ok with the people in the gym. My group then went back upstairs and it was free time. Most of the younger kids were playing tag, where as the older kids were playing more Basketball, Volleyball and other sports. One girl Reagan was bouncing a ball all by herself, so I went over and we played, bounced the ball back and forth and played catch. She had a little trouble catching the ball, but she is young. I tried to get her to join the other young kids in tag, but she seemed really shy and a teacher near by comented that she doesn't like to talk much. Reagan went home, then I joined the tag games with the younger group. Lastly, we did a dance in the middle of the gym with the few kids left, which they seemed to enjoy a lot. I had fun this first lab.

Girls Day Out

Yesterday I helped out with Girls Day Out with the PE Club, which I should probably join. I helped teach gymnastics. I have never done gymnastics before, but the girls had fun learning how to do cart wheels, frontward rolls and playing on the bars and beams. I thought it was a lot of fun.

PED 201

Today was the first lab for my PED 201 class at St. Mary's. I thought it was really fun and the kids were excitied and easy going. I'm excitied to start learning how to teach a class and gets kids motivated to do physical activity and learn basic skills.