Monday, April 23, 2012

Birthday Bash at St. Mary's

I was fortuneate enough to spend my birthday with the time of the St. Mary's students. I had a lot of fun and they really made it a birthday to remeber.... :)





To start off the day my group and I were the leaders of the initial gym activities. The subject of today’s activities were, kicking the ball, and stationary dribbling. There was a wide variety of games involved with these skills. First there was the game of “kick the can” modified so that it was kick the pins over instead. The pins were all lined up and the students had a specific starting point. They had to aim in order to kick over the pin and stay controlled. The other student teachers reset up the pins each time they were knocked down. Continuing with the subject of kicking, the next game was a team game. It still involved the kicking skill but this time there were goals involved instead of pins, and some of the students were defenders until they got to switch.



Then we moved onto the skill of dribbling. The first game played was a modified version of “red light green light.” The students were instructed to dribble the basketball from one side of the court to the other while listening to the color of the lights indicating to go, slow, or stop all while dribbling. This went pretty successful. I tried to key in on the important factors of dribbling such as keeping it at waist level, using fingertips to bounce the ball, and keeping their heads up while dribbling to make sure they did not run into anyone else. This was followed by a dual game of kicking and dribbling. This game was set up so that there were goals underneath the basketball hoop and the student were split up into two teams. One of the teams had pinnies and the other did not, this helped clarify who was on what team. The objective of the game was to score points by either shooting a basket or kicking the ball into the goal. There was a catch though the students could not run all the way down the down to score they could only take three steps and they would have to pass it to a team mate. This was a very exciting game and it got lots of involvement, especially when the student teachers joined in.

After they students were done with that game they were able to do whatever activities they would like in the gym. Some wanted to play a game of tag with the student teachers. We played the original freeze tag first but then it was changed to Chinese temple tag. This was a lot of fun and it got a lot of students running around. The students began to get worn down so before the next activity they all grouped and had a water break for a few minutes.


The next activity was in the cafeteria where they had snack and then was able to participate in various activity such as building blocks, coloring book, checkers, and dominos. The students were very creative with what they build. The student teachers had fun building blocks with them as well. It was interesting to see the different concepts each student creates. The ones who were playing with the dominos were creating house layouts originally but then decided to build the blocks up and then topple them down. We even made a few domino tracts and had lots of twists and turns involved. Then cafeteria time came to an end and each of the students helped clean up their messes and other activities.

We were able to return to gym again and resume playing whatever activities they liked. I got to experience a new activity with one of the students practicing for her beauty pageant. She was very eager to show off her talent portion and even help and train others in their pageant walk and wave. It was humorous, especially when she began her strutting, but it was fun so we played along. Her talent portion involved some gymnastics moves, so we found a blue panel mat in the back corner of the gym to practice on. Once other students saw what we were doing they decided to join in. soon there were a couple students showing off their gymnastics skills. I saw students able to perform splits and cartwheels. Then we decided to work on a little routine with leaps, jumps, rolling, and even a couple of handstands and cartwheels. The students loved being able to show off what they could do.


Soon the day came to an end as we all met in the middle of the gym for our closing games. We started with a game of toilet tag. I worked with a preschooler and she loved to run around and flush everybody’s arm to set them free. Once the game was over a fun and silly song was sung that the students seemed to enjoy. Then finally the St. Mary’s goodbye cheer. It was a successful and fun day once again at St. Mary’s.





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