St. Mary's goes to the West!

Last week at St. Mary's we did our western themed games with the kids. It was a lot of fun and most of us dressed up as cowboy's or cowgirl's. Here are some photo's of me in my western outfit...
I played a game with the pre-K student's called "Obey the Sherriff" in which I started out as the sheriff and all of the student's had to copy all of the movements I made. After that I chose another student to be the sheriff and they got to make up different movements for the rest of the student's to copy. Also, at the beginning of the lab we had to observe two of the Kindergarten student's playing games and look at the way they performed a leap, a horizontal jump, and a slide. My observations can be found in the link below:
To the West!

Cartoons take-two!

Last Wednesday we once again visited St. Mary's. The cartoon theme was a lot of fun and the kids really enjoyed it. Since I was in the special projects group, we colored some flyers and hung them up around the lobby so that all of the parent's could see them as they came to pick up their children. After that, we all went into the gym and played games with the kids which was a blast! At the beginning of lab we each observed two of the kids as they ran, hopped and galloped during the first game. Noting the way that each student performed the actions was interesting and taught me a lot about children of these ages. I can't wait to teach my students the correct form of running, hopping, skipping, etc. so that they may be successful! Here are my lab observations: Lab #2.

Our Chapter 2 Powerpoint

Preparing for the west!

Yesterday in lab my classmates and I played some really fun games. The theme for our lab in 2 weeks is western, so each game had something to do with that. In one of the games, we had to split up into teams and line up on opposite sides of the gym. There were a bunch of balls in the center of the gym and we had to crab walk, squat walk, and bear walk to the center, grab a ball, and then carry it back to our side of the gym. By the end of the game I could barely even make it to our end of the gym I was so tired out! I wish I still had the energy that young kids have to play these kinds of games! Next week we finally get to go back to St. Mary's and play our games for the cartoon theme, can't wait!

Cartoon craziness!

Yesterday in my lab, as a class we played a lot of really fun games. Starting with blob tag, I found myself getting more of a workout than I do at track practice! I even felt like a kid again running around trying my hardest not to get tagged. We also played some other interesting games that I had never played before. My classmates who came up with the games did a fantastic job of explaining them and teaching us how to play them. I hope that the next time we have lab I will get the chance to practice my teaching skills and get some feedback from my peers. I can't wait until we get to actually teach the kids at St. Mary's our games in a week, it's going to be a blast!

On Wednesday I visited St. Mary's once again, but this time I actually made up an activity for the kids to do. Since I was with the preschoolers, I made them outlines of fruits and vegetables to color. They were so cute and they really enjoyed telling me what their favorite fruits and vegetables were. After that we played a memory game with cards containing different kinds of food. They really liked that game and were so excited once they had successfully paired all of the cards. I can't wait to go back to St. Mary's again, next time I will be teaching Kindergarten and 1st grade!

Developing fundamental skills is incredibly important to our profession as physical educators. As stated in the text, our goals as PE teachers are 1. movement skill acquisition, physical activity and fitness enhancement, cognitive learning, and affective growth. Not only is physical education about teaching kids to play sports, it is about teaching them to understand how the body moves and to get the most out of moving correctly in different areas of activity. Teaching them that physical activity and fitness is crucial for a healthy lifestyle is something that must be done. In this chapter, physical fitness was split up into two components: health-related (muscular strength and endurance, cardiovascular endurance, joint flexibility, and body composition) and performance-related (balance, coordination, agility, speed, and power). The three domains of physical education, motor, cognitive, and affective are also important when teaching PE. Here are some pictures of physical educators in action:

(from: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://playactionflagfootball.d4sportsadmin.com/image.aspx%3Fid%3D12%26o%3D419703&imgrefurl=http://playactionflagfootball.clubspaces.com/pagecustom.aspx%3Fid%3D2%26o%3D419703&usg=__DB2aC4N-b-MCQ3_wmYqU_qGy30w=&h=2244&w=2858&sz=1210&hl=en&start=41&zoom=1&tbnid=F5-6UrVvyBPRsM:&tbnh=132&tbnw=173&ei=CntHTaa1DoKKlwfCssSqBA&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dteaching%2Bphysical%2Beducation%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26biw%3D1280%26bih%3D584%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:10%2C808&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=564&vpy=238&dur=541&hovh=199&hovw=253&tx=121&ty=59&oei=AHtHTaWuMoH98Abp3OSyBg&esq=3&page=3&ndsp=21&ved=1t:429,r:3,s:41&biw=1280&bih=584)


(from: http://qwickstep.com/search/teaching-physical-education.html)


A great website that promotes positive physical education is http://www.pecentral.com/. This site contains information on developmental appropriate lessons for children different ideas on how to teach in a fun and creative way, check it out!