Week of October 12, 2015: Y5-2

Bean Bags!!  Young Fives, Kindergarten, first, and second grades worked with bean bags this week.  Similar to our hula hoop lessons, activities focus on movement and space awareness, eye-hand coordination/tracking, and having fun.  We call our beanbags "Beanie".  Activities included many of the following prompts:  

• How many different parts of your body can you balance Beanie?  (Head, forehead, shoulder, fingers, elbow, tummy, back, knee, foot...)
• Stand with Beanie balanced on your head - lower to knees, and then sitting, trying not to let Beanie fall off, without touching it with hands.  
• Take Beanie for a walk on your arm/shoulder/head/back of your hand.  
• Put Beanie on your spot.  stand in front, behind, to the side, on the other side.  Jump forward/backward over Beanie.  Jump side to side over Beanie.  Hop on one foot around Beanie.  
• Build a bridge over Beanie.  Four parts, three parts.  
• Statue:  Move around the room to the music.  When the music stops, put your foot on the closest Beanie and make a statue.  (Gallop, skip, hop on one foot, jump on two feet, sideways slide-step).  
• Beanbag Freeze:  Balance Beanie on your head.  Walk around the playing area without touching Beanie, being careful to not let it slide off.  If Beanie falls, you're frozen.  Others still balancing their Beanie can carefully bend down to pick up your Beanie and hand it to you.  Say Thank you! when someone helps you, and be a helper to others!  
• Beanbag Signals:  My voice signals different activities with Beanie.  
• "Toss and walk":  Toss beanie up and catch, while walking around the playing area.  Gallop, skip, sideways slide-step can also be substituted for walk.  
• "Freeze!"  Let Beanie fall to the floor and make a statue on it. 
• "Leap!"  Leave your Beanie, leaping over as many other Beanies as you can. 
• "Jump!"  Jump side to side over your Beanie. 
• "Hop!"  Hop in a circle around your Beanie. 
• "Bridge!"  Make a bridge over your Beanie. 
• Toss and catching tasks: 
• Toss and catch, using your favorite hand, catching with two hands. 
• Use your other hand, catch with two hands. 
• Toss with one hand, catch with the same hand.  Other hand. 
• Toss with one hand, catch with the other hand.  ("Rainbow tossing")
• Toss Beanie up, clap once, then catch it.  Can you clap twice before catching Beanie? 
• Can you toss Beanie, touch your shoulders, then catch it? 

Activities adapted from Landy and Landy, Ready to Use PE Activities for Grades K-2, 1992.  

Hungry Hippos: Young Fives and Kindergarten Adaptation

Young Fives and Kindergarten are participating in an adapted version of Hungry Hippos.  The basic setup is the same, and students sit criss-cross-applesauce on the scooter.  They collect beanbags in their lap, and the team with the most beanbags at the end of the round wins the round.  Then a new student has a chance to be the hippo.  This lesson reinforces scooter safety concepts, space awareness concepts, cooperation, and one-to-one correspondence.

Young Fives playing Hippos

Counting the beanbags

Warm-ups, Hungry Hungry Hippos, Scooters, and Teamwork

Cardio Warm-Up

This week, each class will begin with a five minute cardiovascular warm-up.  A timer will be projected on the wall, with a buzzer sound at the conclusion of the five minutes.  For the next couple of weeks, we'll gradually increase the warm-up time to prepare for the mile run (grades 3-5 FitnessGram test, grade 2 practice), half mile run/walk (Young Fives, K, and 1st grade), AND the Haisley Walk-a-Thon!!

This is what our "scoreboard" looks like.  Using a projector, it displays on the wall for all to see during our warm-up.  This helps students know exactly how much time is left in the warm-up activity.  

Hungry Hungry Hippos

Hungry Hippos is the name of the game for this week for 1st through 5th grade.  This was entirely inspired by social network posts (Pinterest/Facebook) from other PE teachers.  Hungry Hungry Hippos was one of my favorite childhood games to play.  Imagine this game in the gymnasium, and the students are the "hippos".  Teams work together to send out a teammate on a scooter with a small plastic container.  On the scooter, the student must use the plastic container to trap balls from the floor to slide them back to their team's area.  The team with the most balls in their corner wins that round.

Update  4/16:  K and Young Fives participate in a modified version of this game, reinforcing teamwork, cooperation, scooter safety, and space awareness.  Check out the blog post about their version here.

****UPDATE 4/16:  We'll have to save our Sewer teamwork activity (below) for another time...Hippos definitely needed all of our class time this week!!  

Teamwork

This week, if time allows, students will also participate in a teamwork activity called The Sewer.  This activity also includes spatial awareness, communication, problem solving, and strategy.

Students are divided into groups of four.  Each group has three cones and one hula hoop.  Cones are set in a triangular pattern, with the hoop balanced on top.  This makes the group's sewer top.  Groups have different challenges to accomplish together.  These include:

1.  Students begin outside the sewer.  One at a time, they must enter the sewer and stay inside until all student are inside.
2.  All students are inside.  They must now have all students leave the sewer one at a time.
3.  Students must go under the sewer top and stand inside the hoop one at a time.
4.  Students are in the hoop and now crawl under the hoop, one at a time, until they're all out.

Fitness Testing

Here's some catch up on PE happenings:

We returned from our December break to discover the gym floor was refinished!  Shiny and ready for the PACER test. :)   So, we've started the PACER test - along with other fitness testing items.  This year, my goal is to finish our second round of fitness testing (except for the mile run, of course!) while we're inside the gym during winter months.  Springtime, approaching Walk-a-Thon, we'll prepare for our second mile run testing of the year.

The PACER stands for Progressive Aerobic Cardiovascular Endurance Run.  Students run back and forth between two lines, 15 meters apart.  They have to make it to the line on or before the music beeps.  The beeps begin farther apart, and slowly get closer together -- making the students keep "pace" with the beeps.  A student gets one warning, and then if they're late to the line a second time, their test is over.  The test is, at most, 6 minutes 30 seconds or less for most students (only fifth grade could possibly go as long as 6:30).  Students are encouraged to push themselves to score their best, but also reminded that their safety and well-being is the most important thing.  They can stop the test at any time.

For grades Y5, K, and 1, I set out colored cones to help students stay running on a straight line.  Y5 and K don't have recorded scores for the PACER test, but they participate to learn how the test feels, looks, and sounds.  First through fifth grades do have recorded scores for the PACER test.  I stop first grade at 20 laps, second at 30 laps, third at 40, fourth at 50, and fifth at 60.  These upper lap limits are for student safety, and also in the interest of time.  All of those scores are well above the lower threshold for the healthy fitness zone for age.

See these previous posts about Fitness Testing for more information. :)  Also, the FitnessGram website has a wealth of information.

Here is a first grade class ready to start the PACER test.  Students have a colored cone that is their target, right behind each line they have to touch.  This encourages running in a straight line -- to save  energy, and also to stay out of other students' running paths.

Y5 and K: Ball Familiarization Lesson Photo

Here are photos from our first day of lessons on ball familiarization.  Students are rolling and moving the ball around their bodies in different ways, and then rolling the ball and catching it after it bounces off of the wall and rolls back to them.  

Y5 and K: Week of 12/8/2014

Ball Familiarization

Young Fives and Kindergarteners will be working with playground balls (aka kickball ball, bouncy ball) this week.  They'll be doing different exploration tasks with them, such as:

• holding the ball in different locations relative to their body (high, low, to the right, left, in front, behind, etc.) -- trying this with both hands and then with one hand, and the other hand
• making a bridge over the ball
• sitting down, "criss cross applesauced", with ball in both hands -- try to stand up without using hands to help or letting go of the ball
• rolling the ball around body parts while sitting/standing
• rolling the ball against the wall and catching it
• partner rolling tasks

Check the PE blog later in the week for pictures of students experiencing these lessons!!  

Lower Elementary: Week of 11/10/14

Lower elementary and young fives students continue to practice locomotor skills during our warm-up activities.  This week, after warm-up and stretch, we're working with jump ropes -- without picking them up and using them as actual jump ropes!!  There are many activities we do with ropes -- besides jumping!!

Here are some of the movements students were encouraged to try.  We used two different ropes:  speed ropes (made of a molded plastic material, all one piece) and beaded ropes (a rope with beaded sections.)

Speed ropes:  Stretch the rope flat in an approximately straight line.  

• Pretend the rope is a tightrope and walk along it.  
• Walk forward, backward, sideways along the rope.  
• Try to walk forward/backward/sideways with eyes closed. 
• Jump/hop side to side/front to back over the rope.  
• Jump/hop side to side/front to back while moving from one handle to the other handle.  
• Make a pattern of hops / jumps while moving from one handle to the next handle.  
• Make a bridge (with own body) over the rope.  Try to move the bridge from one end of the rope to the other end.  
• Keep hands on the floor and jump feet over the rope.  
• Leap over classmate's ropes (picture below).  Count how many leaps you do before "Freeze!"
• Try other ways of moving along the rope - including criss-cross walking, jumps/hops, etc.  I love to see what students come up with for these movement exploration lessons!!  

Beaded ropes:  Make the rope into a variety of shapes.  

• Begin with students working individually with their own rope.  
• Students are assigned a small group, 3-4 students.  They then work together to make shapes with ropes on the floor.  This helps with students' space awareness, and number/shape/letter recognition.  
• Each group begins with an index card with a shape, letter, or number on it.  They work together with their group to create the shape, letter, or number using ALL of their group's ropes.  
• When finished creating the shape/number/letter on the card, the group trades their card for a new card.   Index cards are velcro attached to the wall, so students can easily trade for a new card.  (Photo below of activity and index card set-up.)

Scrambled Eggs!!

Scrambled Eggs is a low organization game we played with lower elementary classes in the past two weeks.  Students move to music around the gym using locomotor skills:  skip, gallop, hop, jump, walk, sideways slide-step.  While they're moving, they are "scrambled eggs".  When the music stops, students stop and listen for what type of egg they are to be.

Hard boiled egg:  curl into a ball on the floor.
Soft boiled egg:  lay flat on the floor on tummy.
Fried egg:  lay on back, wiggle hands and feet in the air.

Here's a picture of "Fried Eggs", which was many students' favorite part of the game:

This game, and others like it, include many important PE concepts and skills:  locomotor skills, personal space, space awareness (staying in "the box", boundary line around the edge of the gym), following directions, and listening skills.  For lower elementary students, all of these skills are the main focus of our first several PE classes, and are emphasized throughout the year.