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Easter at St. Mary's

Lab 5 was Easter themed and the kids really seemed to like all of our Easter games.  My group was the special projects group so we were in charge of closing activities.  For closing activities, we had a game where students did different movement patterns and exercises, our own version of the Peter Cottontail song, and a "Happy Easter!" cheer.

As for the actual lab portion of this lab, we assessed dribbling with the hand (like in basketball) and kicking.  We assessed two kindergarteners, one boy and one girl.  Both students were 5 years old but the girl was much more advanced when it came to these 2 skills. See the lab writeup here

Will and I playing tag with some of the kids outside

All the students sliding in a circle around Joe as he sings Peter Cottontail

Each egg had a movement pattern or exercise in it. The kids loved the end of the game when they got candy

Happy Easter!

 

St. Mary's Spring 2011 Recap

Even though we still have 2 labs left at St. Mary's, I made a short video of pictures from throughout the semester to showcase things we've done during our time at the school.

Thanks St. Mary's for allowing us to come be a part of your school!


St. Mary's Spring 2011

St. Mary's Hops Aboard the Dinosaur Train

The theme for this weeks lab was the show Dinosaur Train.  When we first got to St. Mary's we spent some time filling out the lab writeup.  After the writeup was done, we split up into our groups and started our activities. This week I was in the pre-K room.  For my activity, I printed up blank pictures of dinosaurs for the kids to color.  The kids really seemed to enjoy coloring and most of the kids took extra blank pictures to bring home and color some more.  After the kids were done coloring, we took them into the gym and played some games with them.  My game was Dinosaur Tag and I had the kids run around like different dinosaurs and tag each other.  The kids really liked this game but maybe I should have started them off playing at a walking pace because a lot of kids ended up running into each other.

Dinosaur Train Prep Week

We don't have any class or lab this week so I decided to use this week to prep for next week's Dinosaur Train lab at St. Mary's.  I'm making a big train poster that the kids can hang in the classroom.  I'm going to have them all color their own dinosaurs and put them on the train poster.

I also used this week to work on my e-portfolio. I should have more artifacts to add to it after my Lab D in EDU 255 next Friday.

St. Mary's Visits the Wild West

Lab 3 was our Wild West lab and the kids really seemed to like it.  A lot of the teachers were dressed as cowboys and this really seemed to get the kids attention.  My game today was Tornado Tag.  While down in the cafeteria with the students, I asked them what they wanted to play and they all told me about Toilet Tag, I just changed the name to Tornado Tag to keep with the Western theme.  Since I've seen a lot of games crash and burn when the kids aren't interested, I figured that playing a game that the kids chose would help to keep their attention.

At the beginning of the lab, we observed 2 kindergarten students and assessed them in leaping, horizontal jumping, and sliding.

Cartoon Characters Invade St. Mary's

Our cartoon themed lab at St. Mary's was a big hit with the kids.  They seemed to enjoy playing all of the cartoon themed games and really liked the couple of college kids who dressed up for the occasion.  We started off the lab by observing a couple of kindergarten students and assessing them on running, galloping and hopping.

My group was working with the older kids today and most of our games centered around scooters.  The kids loved playing with the scooters and because of that, a lot of our games were big successes.  By the time it was my turn to teach, I think the kids were sick of structured games because they didn't seem the least bit interested in playing anymore games.  Because of this I just let them roll around on the scooters for 5 minutes before we got into another structured game.