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.