Week 3 at St.Mary's (2/27/12)

Week 3 at St.Mary's was sports themed.  Many games used Olympics, medals, and sports poses to og along with the theme. Some of us also wore sports jersey's to help set the mood. The fundamental movement skills that we focused on this week were leaping, horizontal jumping, and sliding. Click here to view my lab report!

Opening games included many relay races using these fundamental skills. What I found from watching the kids during the opening games is that the  kids would do the skill for a short period of time and it was hard to assess them on the skills. Some kids did the skill for a longer period of time, showing that students really are individuals and are all on different skill levels.

My group was with the Pre-K kids. We read them a few books and helped them make their own first place medals in their classroom; and we played games with them in the gym.  The  game I had the kids play was called "Crossing The Brook". The kids had to jump over  (leap over, skip over-whatever skills I told them to do)  ropes that were on the ground (representing brooks) without stepping on the ropes. If they stepped on a rope they had to tap their shoes 3 times to pretend that they were drying their socks and shoes off. At first I didn't explain that they had to stop at the other side to wait for everyone to cross the brooks, so they were going back and forth creating clutter-but I got their attention and fixed the problem. Another game we played was like London Bridge. After that I came up with a race that included the arches from the London-Bridge like game becase they loved trying to get captured under the arches. After that fizzled out me and my groupmates played with the kids in whatever activity theywanted to do. I played with a boy and a girl playing basketball with them and playing catch with the boy. I had him try different sized balls and trying to catch/throw with just one hand and with two hands. The Pre-K group was fun to be with, they're all so energetic and they really want to do whatever you have for them.

After being there 3 times now I have learned that you  have to face the kids in a direction that doesn't face other activities, otherwise they'll get distracted. Also, being on their level, yet high enough to show that you're in control helps while instructing.