Monday Lab 2/21

Today was a prep lab because the students at St. Mary's have off. We got to practice our own games and get feed back from our peers. I think these prep labs are very helpful because they make us realize what games work and what games we may have to change up a little bit so that the kids can understand them better. Seeing my peers teach games really helps me also because it gives me ideas on how to get the children listening and engaged in what I am trying to teach them. At the end of the day it is really difficult for the students to get all settled down and paying attention to you and get them really interested in your game. If you play a game that they already have played within the last month they have no interest in it at all so you have to learn to adapt and be able to change your game very quickly to get the children to want to play your game. Calling the game a different name and having taggers be called different things and using different locomotor movements totally changes the game for the students.

Lab on Monday 2-7

This was our first lab that we got to interact with the children at St. Mary's school a lot better than the first time. We were able to teach some games and involve all the kids with the activities. My group was the Special Project group so at first we went around and organized the closest which held all the equipment. I think this was an excellent thing to do first before having to teach because I got to see all the equipment that St. Mary's had and started to put some games together in my head. After completing our task with the closets, we then went out and played games with the children. The first game was run by the after school staff and it was a murder mystery game, it was a very quick game, but fun. Then our peers were on the other side of the gym teaching their games so we went over and participated with them and got involved with the students. At the end of the lab our group had to come up with a closing game, song and chant. I was able to teach my game at the very end. I should have been a lot more enthusiastic about my game to get the students really interested in it, there are always going to be the students who do not want to do anything you do even if it is the best thing on earth. There were some students who really liked it and others who did not want to play at all. Then our TA did the song and it was shake your sillies out, we went around in a circle and just danced, the younger students were really into it while the older students wanted nothing at all to do with it. Overall I believe the first day was a success and was a great time. I really enjoyed interacting with the students and finding out what some of their likes and dislikes were. I am looking forward to next weeks lab even more!

Virtus Training

During class we watched this video that was on child molesters and children who were victims. The movie made me think about how anyone that your child trusts could be a molester and you really don't know who is one or not. There are key things to look out for that could indicate that someone may be a child molester, some of them manipulate the kids to believe they are someone they can trust and insure that when they are molested that it is okay and that they are doing the right thing for the child. We have to make sure that kids know that if they are molested that they can talk to anyone about it and shouldn't think that they were the ones that did something wrong. We also learned a couple ways to avoid being accused of molesting a child and making sure that we do have witnesses. Making sure that we are never alone with the child and always leaving the door open is a big thing. Making sure that we are not in the child's personal space and hugging them even if they want to be hugged we have to maintain the professional boundary and always be looking out for the child's and our own safety because it is very hard to prove yourself innocent after an accusation.

lab on Monday 1-31

In lab we started out by playing a couple tag games and other cooperative games in the rock wall gym. After that we went down into one of the classrooms and went over a lot of the paper work that we will need to use throughout the semester. We also made our lab groups and came up with names for them, ours is "Krazy Kangaroos". The class seems a lot of fun once we get into everything and I am really looking forward to selecting games for the kids to play and getting them all involved with the activities that we pick.