Lab #3

This week was western themed, and i was in charge of bringing my group's craft.  I decided to cut out western themed shaped of paper for the children to color.  The kids were slow to show interest however once I began to participate with them they all wanted to color with me.  This taught me the importance of your enthusiasm towards your activity when attempting to reach out to the kids.

Lab #2

Working with the pre-k group this week for lab #2's cartoon theme was very interesting.  I had brought a book with a bunch of different short stories based upon the kid's favorite cartoon characters.  The kids seemed to react very well to the stories I read, I could see they liked it through their increased attention spans and they were excited to choose the next story.

lab #1

This was the first time I had ever personally been in charge of a group of children.  I was extremely nervous even though I had put alot of effort into my game.  However, despite my concern the children reacted very enthusiastically towards my game.  I'm looking forward to this week's cartoon theme, i would like to out-do myself and create a very creative and fun game for the children at Saint Mary's.

Ch. 1 : An Overview of Developemental Physical Education

This was a very interesting reading, one thing in particular that caught my interest was the aid Physical Education provides in developing perceptual motor learning in the spatial and temporal world.  I never really thought about phys. ed. as a catalyst to developing young minds, i generally thought about phys. ed. in the traditional terms(that it provided only physical fitness and aiding in modeling healthy lifestyles).  This chapter suggests that early physical education is the foundation for key athletic skills such as coordination and balance.  That is very interesting to me, because most people see the foundation for athleticism to be "god given" or formed through early participation in one's sport.  I believe if more people recognized that phys. ed. creates better athletes there would be more support, rather than believing the only important factor to athleticism in their young children's lives is youth sports.

My First Experience at St. Mary's

My first day at St. Mary's I had an incredible time.  I was excited yet nervous to interract with the students.  When our TA first released us to play with the students I was unsure how to approach them.  However, quicker than I expected I was able to introduce myself to a few of the kids and they were very accepting and friendly.  I played a great game of basketball with several of the students and began to absorb their unique personalities.  I am very excited for my next PED 201 lab.