Children Give Thanks at St.Mary's!

This week at St. Mary's my group worked with the Pre-K children. It was nice to work with the kids in the classroom for the beginning of the afternoon. While some children listened to a story, I worked with near 10 Pre-K students making turkeys out of pine cones. Not realizing in advance that the children did not use scissors in that classroom, it was a little difficult to prepare the construction paper "feathers", but in the end we had more than enough feathers for all of the children to use. I learned that the kids are going to do the craft their way- which is interesting to see their unique minds work. They all understood the Thanksgiving concept and all of the kids were excited to participate in my craft which made me feel good about it and happy to share it with the children but also wish that I had had more time with it. Our activities were based on pretending to make apple pies by kicking balls ("apples") into curved jump-rope (the pie crust). We also incorporated other ideas such as Pilgrim tag games and waddling turkey activities involving music to move around to. I really enjoy incorporating music into play. I believe it is a great idea to get your students moving. Last week in Prep-Lab I had a great time playing the games while Professor Yang played upbeat songs that were fun to move to. This is something I certainly want to bring to my future Physical Education setting.  We assessed a group of first to second graders on their kicking and dribbling abilities in which I was surprised to see how well they could control the ball with their bodies. You can check out my assessment and further explanations of this week's lab here! Overall the day was exhilarating with lots of great energy.