Lab 6!

April 8th, 2009 was our Easter lab. Since we did not rate any of the students child development my group went right into pre K. The teacher took the kids on a short walk and we hid eggs full of candy so the kids could have an Easter egg hunt. When the kids came back they were all allowed to take two eggs. They all loved this activity and were so excited to find the eggs. They kept telling us that we weren't the Easter bunny which started to make me laugh. After a little time we switched pre-k rooms where I made necklaces. When we went in the gym we did a Easter obstacle course. I told the kids that they had to follow the Easter bunny to his house. The kids were very excited and some of the first grade kids came over to do the obstacle course as well. For the last obstacle we put an Easter door mat on top of a pannel mat in which they had to jump on. Every student seemed to be so excited to jump on the door mat. This made me realize how important the little props can be. Overall i had a great experience at St. Marys for the six labs I was there.

Lab 5!

April 7th, 2009 we had to focus our activities on kicking or dribbling a basketball. My group went first and did a simple one on one competition drill. Each student got a partner and we lined them up across each other with a cone in between the two students. The goal of the game was to hit the cone and the two kids would individually compete against each other. This activity went drastically wrong. We tried explaining the drill to the students in different ways and many of them didn't know what we were doing. Once we handed out the balls to the individual pairs they all went nuts and starting punting the balls all over the place and just didn't follow the rules so we stopped our game and let the next group go. Overall it wasn't the best lab day.

Lab 4!

March 23, 2009 I had to attend Monday's lab. I could tell the students acted a little different in this class than they do normally in my normal Wednesday lab. They were more open to the theme of the day because they had not done it yet. Today we observed their throwing and catching abilities. The theme for the day was favorite foods and the opening group did an activity in which the students had to throw foods across an area in order to put them on the pizza. The kids seemed to find this game interesting but it was hard to grade the individual students. My group went with the pre-k students and I played with legos with a bunch of the kids and then we all sat down for a book. Throughout the whole time the one kid Andrew kept pretending he was a stingray so he was stinging everyone including me. He was very funny to watch when he was walking around stinging people.

Lab 3

March 4th, 2009 we had our superhero lab. When the first group told the kids that were going to pretend to be superheroes a few of the kids said "but we were just superheroes yesterday!" The kids just had lab on Monday with the other group and weren't excited to be superheroes again. Fortunately, we finally got the students attention and they enjoyed being superheroes. In the one game they had to save batman because he was trapped. They were all so excited when they set him free. My group did our activity down stairs in the cafeteria. We played a sharks and minors type game but called it superheroes and villains. The villains had to steal the superheroes "cape," which were actually little handkerchiefs that we had the superheroes put in their pockets. After the game was finished Luke and Colin turned our game into a one on one villain vs. superhero match. Overall I think superheroes are good game ideas because the kids seemed to love pretending to be superheroes.

Lab 2!

February 25, 2009 we did our animal lab. The kids were very excited to when they saw a few of our college kids we're farm attire. We started the lab off with the barn yard chase. The students didn't quite follow the directions for this game because they were all to concerned with trying to grab the little pictures of the animals. When the kids had to go around the outside of the parachute they had to use the locomotor skills of running and galloping. This allowed everyone to grade Mike and Casey's development. The next game we did for the students was Zany Zoo. The kids really enjoyed this one because they were able to act like animals and move around just like the animal card they picked. I really enjoyed when a student got the shark card because every student that picked needed help on how a shark got around. Colin had the biggest smile on his face when he became the shark and pretended to swim around. Next activity we did was the Stinky Stew. The kids also enjoyed this activity.

Feb 18th lab class

Today the school had something going on so we didn't get to have lab with the kids. Instead we went to D305 and learned some games that we could use with the students next class. My group had to come up with our own game to share with the class and we decided to teach chuck the chicken. Having us teach our peers i feel that it helped us get used to talking to a whole group at once. It will be different when teaching younger students but it definitely gave us an idea of what its like. By observing other students teach i also learned new ways in which to help give directions.

Lab Day 1

Day one at St. Marys was definitely an experience. The kids were really wound up when we got there and really wanted to play. The group that i dealt with most was the 2nd grade age group. We started off with some tag games to get the kids to start moving around. At first everyone was involved but after sometime a few of the students got bored with the activities we were doing and then sat out. Next we went down to the cafeteria for their snack. During snack time i play scrabble with Colin and Autumn. The kids just wanted to spell words so i would help them find the letters in the box so they could spell. After a while autumn got sick of scrabble and wanted to play something else. We then went and play go fish with another student named Luke. We played one or two hands and then time was up and we went back upstairs. Once upstairs it was almost a free for all. The students all went off and played whatever they felt like with some of the Cortland students. I played Pacman tag with Luke. The idea of the game was to stay on the lines of the basketball court and not get tagged by the Pacman, or tagger. I found it pretty funny because the kids would hop off the line if they were about to be tagged. Overall today's lab definitely helped me prepare for what i will be facing every lab class.