Superheroes Stop In!!!

This week in lab it was superhero week. I think the kids just loved us all this week because we all dressed up as superheroes. My group was the first group to go today and i feel it went really well compared to the last time we had to go first. This time we played a quick tag game to get their attention and try and tire them out a little so they would listen better. After we played the tag game and calmed them down we played with the parachute, which the kids LOVED! After playing several parachute games like, popcorn, air conditioner, shark, and just making waves we went down to the cafeteria and worked on fine motor skills. The kids played with legos and built houses, space ships, and boats. They absolutely love building space ships with us, that's all they could talk about for the entire time we were down there. Every two seconds was them saying "look at my ship, isn't it cool". This lab just went great i feel i couldn't be any happier knowing that we went out with a bang for our last lab of the semester. I'm very lucky to be able to work with kids from the school and actually get to do hands on work, it definitely helps out a lot.

Toy Story Week

This week at lab my group was in charge of special projects. This means that we basically help out the school by organizing their closets that hold all their equipment. We also are in charge of the final game, song, and cheer. We didn't get to our game but we did do our song and cheer. The song we chose to do was the chicken dance song. We changed the lyrics to involve the toy story theme, which i thought went over pretty well. The only problem that i saw was that the song was to fast so the beginning was a little rough, but once we got through the first verse it went really well. Our cheer was "to infinity and behind", i feel the kids enjoyed that cheer as well. All and all i think this might have been one of our best labs. Can't wait for the next lab, i have a feel it is going to be a great one.

Easter Lab

This lab went very well i thought. The kids seemed to want to try our activities and give them a chance. I feel my game went pretty good it definitely good have gone better but in the end i think it was a success. As the labs go bye i seem to learn a lot more information on how to become a great physical educator. There's only two labs left and i think they will both be a success because we all now have seen the kids at their worst and their best so we know how to adapt to their personalities.

Dinosaur Week

This week in lab we did a dinosaur theme. My group was the first group to go this week and it was rough! The kids were just so wired and energetic that it made are group look like we couldn't control them. All the kids wanted to do was play basketball and run around and play with their friends. I did learn that since we were the first group going we should have just played a quick game that would get them tired out so that they would then listen and want to play our games. After attempting to play our games and the other group played their games the kids just wanted to play basketball. I tried to have the kids i worked with show me their dribble and shot, just to try and have them work on skills instead of just messing around with their friends. The kids loved the song that the last group did and i think it was a great finish to a rough start.

Child Growth and Development

Childhood Growth and Development on Prezi

Movement Skills and Physical Fitness

Fundamental movement skills are the development of the body’s motor control, precision, and accuracy in the performance of movements. Two kinds of fundamental movement skills are locomotion and manipulation. A few examples of locomotion skills are; walking, running, and jumping. Those are three basic skills for locomotion. Combinations skills for locomotion are climbing, sliding, and skipping. A few examples of manipulation are propulsive, which is like ball rolling, kicking, and bouncing. There also is absorptive, which is catching and trapping.
Stability is broken up into two sections, axial and Static and dynamic postures. A couple of examples of axial stability would be bending and swinging. Examples of static and dynamic postures would be rolling and dodging.
Physical fitness is defined as a combination of Health related fitness and Performance related fitness. Health related fitness is made up of the body’s muscular strength, muscular endurance, cardiovascular endurance, flexibility, and body composition. Performance related fitness is made up of what the body can do. Balance, speed of movement, agility, and coordination are all examples of this.

Developmental Physical Education

There are three critical issues that children in the US are facing today. The first issue is that childhood obesity has been rising rapidly. The second issue at hand is that the violence in schools and in the communities among the youth has all of us alarmed. The third issue is early puberty has important psychosocial ramifications.
There are several goals that go along with Developmental Physical Education. Two of those goals are physical activity and fitness enhancement and cognitive learning. Physical activity and fitness enhancement means keeping the child active with physical activity. By doing this would enhance their fitness levels and help keep them in shape. Cognitive learning is the ability to think, reason, and act to new movement settings.
There are three major factors that lead to the development of the whole child and they are; Biology of the “individual”, Conditions of the learning “environment”, and Requirements of the movement “task”.
Individual appropriateness is the idea that children have their own individual timing and pattern of growth and development. Group appropriateness is the idea that age and grade level influence the curriculum but are secondary to individual appropriateness.
The difference between the two is that individual appropriateness is geared more specifically to the child’s level of personal fitness and cognitive development, while group appropriateness provides only general guidelines for the activities selected.

Olympic Theme Lab

In today's lab i worked with the pre-k again and we made Olympic medals. I got most of the class to come join me and make the medals, some of the children were really excited and others were a little shy because i was new to them. The ones that were really into it remembered me from the last lab and came right over to me and wanted to do what i was doing. We crafted these medals because we had an Olympic theme for this lab. Once we did our craft they had snack and after snack my group member read the book The Wuzzolympics. They all seemed to enjoy the book. After that we played a game in the room with them. the game consisted of moving like an Olympian. For example, a group member would say "snowboard like a snowboarder" and they would pretend they were snowboarding. This game got them warmed up for the activities we did in the gym. In the gym we played tag games but instead of always running they had to hop, gallop, and run. Just about all of them could run pretty well and did it like it with all elements correct. Having them hop was good to see because they understood that hopping was on one foot but most of them didn't have the other elements down. Galloping some good do it well and others not so well. you have to get right down to all of the students level and show them otherwise they don't give you their full attention and wont understand the activities. Over all i believe the lab went really well and i believe that the children enjoyed all of the activities that we did with them.

Lab Movie!

Hall of Shame

In my opinion, a physical education curriculum should be based on what will provide the most beneficial factors to the students. Without a question there must be a important level of physical fitness and motivation involved, the activites should provide positive reinforcement to the student, and there also needs to be a level of enjoyment and satisfaction. Activities like dodgeball and kickball can without a doubt be fun for students and an enjoyable time in gym class. The physical education program needs to provide fitness for students as well as discipline. Dodgeball and kickball do not meet the standards for fitness and do not improve students physical abilities. Students need to be presented with activities with a more focused task and a more challenging set of rules. Students need to be challenged and their bodies need to be motivated and pushed to their full physical potential.

Mon Feb 8th lab

hello everyone,
Today in lab i observed the pre-k students. i started out by playing with two children who were playing with farm animals, they loved their farm animals. They knew every noise that all the farm animals make. It was interesting to me because they would just make the goat and bull/cow fight the whole time, and the goat would always win. We then moved on to building a garage out of Lego's. They loved building it and did a great job. I then switched classrooms and played with three other children, and they were playing with plastic figures and all they wanted to do was to put people in jail haha. i found it very interesting because they would come up with various crimes that they committed. it was then snack time and they all went to the bathroom to wash their hands and they stand neatly against the wall when they are done. some children dunked their pretzels in their milk and got in trouble, others ate them so fast didn't even realize they had snack. it was then time to read a book i didn't read but i observed and all the children love this time, they get really excited and into the book. last we went into the gym and played tag games. they also love their tags games, they would play them all day if they were aloud to. for them to understand the concept of the game we had to use things that they knew. for example fire trucks and police cars we used for one and they loved it. this is the best way to keep their attention is to always use things they like and know.

Lab#1

On Monday January 25, 2009 i went to St Marys School for my class lab. During this lab the teacher showed us what we all would be doing for the rest of the semester for our labs. He had the lab assistants show us around the school and get us familiarized with the school settings. after all of that we then started working/ playing games with the younger kids, whose ages ranged from 4-10. i played several different games with the couple children that i was working with. the games and activities i played were basketball, monkey in the middle, played with Lego's, and played a little soccer. i really enjoyed doing these activities with the children it made them happy and me happy. so overall i really enjoyed every minute of that lab class it was a really good time and good learning experience on how children react n how their motor skills work pretty much.