Last Day at St. Mary's

Well we finally finished our first bit of field experience and are on our ways to becoming Physical Education teachers, but I think that most of us find it a bit bittersweet. This last week was, like the last weeks, even more fun than the weeks before it and it seems like as soon as we started to become comfortable with all the students it had to end. I was able to work with the Pre-K students again and with out superhero theme I brought in pictures for the kids to color in of various superheros. Dan read a book about a super hero guinea pig and then we started to play our games. I had a variation of freeze tag and I called it "Mr. Freeze Tag" to tie it in with superhero, the kids loved it and were running around constantly with a few of the other college lab students that were dressed up as superheros. Then we had a small obstacle course for the kids where they had to help save WonderWoman and after that the time was up and our last week at St. Mary's was over and it feels like we've barely been there. I loved going to St. Mary's and working with the kids and I'm sad to go and I've learned much from my experience there and you can see my reflections about it here.

Security or Food?

In this experiment conducted by Harry Harlow, the main idea was to find out whether the rhesus monkey would choose the security and comfort of a "mother" made of cloth compared to a "mother" made of wire with just a bottle to feed it. The beginning idea was that the time would be split almost even amongst the two but the final result was not even close. The monkey spent almost 17-18hrs each day with the cloth mother! It only went to the wire mother when it was hungry and needed food. I expected the cloth mother to have more time than the wire mother but not anywhere near this much of a majority. The idea of the monkey going to the cloth was called "Creature Comfort" which is the idea that an infant will go to the more comfortable choice in any situation. This just goes to show how much of an effect a nurturing and comforting parent can have on a child.

This week's theme at lab was Toy Story and Dan and Mitch both came in dressed up and were both instant hits with the kids. We assessed stationary bounce(dribble) and kicking and you can see how it turned out here. We started off with a game that involved two teams trying to get a ball down to other end by passing it and dribbling it, the game was set up well, but a couple of the students weren't too enthused to play it which in the end hurt the overall game. After this we played kickball with the students which was fun and they seemed to enjoy it. After kickball was over we went into the cafeteria because the gym was taken up. In the cafeteria I played with the dominoes with a couple boys until the time was up and we did the group cheer with everyone. Overall this was another fun week at St. Mary's!

Easter at St. Mary's

This week at St. Mary's our group was assigned to special assignment so we didn't get to play a game in the beginning with the kids, but we observed them and assessed their play. One of the first games had the children throw eggs from their side to the other side, this game was a good was to assess their throwing technique, but at points the children wouldn't throw with proper form and would try to rush it which hurt their technique. After a little bit the children were split up and we had to go to our special project. Our task was to put up a large banner that we would take a picture in front of at the end of the class. Also we had to take collages that the entire class made and put them on posters to put on the doors of the gymnasium which took a decent amount of time to make. Once this was done it was time for the end of the day activities which we led. The first one was Dan's game of "Sneak Attack" which had the students try to sneak up on the people who were it and then run back to their side of the court without getting tagged. This was a good instant activity which got the kids' attention. Next Holly explained her dance which involved each students having a hula hoop to stand in and them copy Holly's movements which included: hops, jumps, skips and running around the hoop. After this we all took a group photo in front of the banner that we put up and that ended the day. This was one of the most fun days so far at St. Mary's and it seems that with every week its getting easier and easier to do.

Dinosaur Train Stops at St. Mary's

This week at St. Mary's the theme was Dinosaur Train. Working with the Pre-K students has been my favorite week so far and I hope I get to work with them again. The lab started off with us observing another group starting up all the activities, which went well. The first game involved the students going through a "forest" and jumping over rivers. This game worked very well and it kept the students active and occupied enough to make sure that they performed the skills that were necessary. After these groups did their activities we took note and answered questions based off of a couple students.

Pre-K was a ton of fun and working with these kids was a pleasure. We started off with Dan reading a story to a few kids and a few others didn't want to read so they continued to play. I played legos with a few boys for a little bit, but they didn't seem too interested with me playing with them so I asked a couple girls if they wanted me to play castle with them. I played Lena with the castles and learning her name then later helped me when we did our game at the end. After the book was finished the kids had snack time in the next room and after they snacked they wanted to read a book so we did that again. After this book was over we went into the gym with the kids and I started my first game. The game went well, but after a few minutes the students started going off of the rules that they actually went by at first. Then they started to play by their own rules, but before this got out of hand the next game was set-up and we were ready. The last game went well and we were able to see the students perform the different skills. Overall working with the Pre-K students was my favorite group to work with and Dinosaur Train was a big success!

Childhood Development

Childhood development is very important and making sure every step is done properly can ensure that a child gets everything that they need.

The Fundamentals and Physical Fitness

The fundamental locomotor skills are the most important and need to not only be taught but taught to the point that students are almost perfect at it. Skills like running, jumping, and hopping are some of the fundamentals and not knowing how to do these will effect other skills that are more advanced. Knowing how to do these skills will eventually lead to the ability to manipulate them into other skills like kicking, punting and bouncing.

Making sure students have the different kinds of stability (axial, static and dynamic) is important. Axial stability would include things like bending or twisting. There are also static and dynamic postures which would be rolling or dodging. Having stability is important and without it many advanced skills will suffer and the student will become stuck at one level.

Physical fitness can be broken down into two components: Health Related and Performance Related. Health related deals with strength, endurance, cardio, and flexibility. You want a combination of all these things to get through your day with enough energy to perform all your normal tasks and making sure you have extra energy in case there is an emergency. The performance-related aspect will make sure that you are able to do tasks at a high level and the higher your skill the easier your tasks will be. Some examples of this are balance, coordination, and agility.