This past week in PE - Sept. 21 - 25

Another busy week in PE. All the children are getting ready for the Homecoming Fun Run that will be held next week - Wednesday, Sept.30th. The race route is different this year due to the construction. The starting point is behind the tennis courts, near the baseball field. If you would like to come out and cheer on all our runners, the event begins at 2:20 with our SK and 3rd grade running buddies. There will be a flyer posted in the Friday Folder this Friday.



Senior Kindergarten



"A snake crawled right over my SK buddies foot" explained Megan (3rd) as she and her partner started off on the course. "Look at this cool leaf bug I found" exclaimed Marina (3rd ) as she showed it to all the interested "entomologists." Not only did we get a good work out as we learned the course, we were able to take in some of the creatures that visit our campus on a daily basis. If you ever want to go on a fun nature hike (a great family activity to do to be active), try the USM cross country course which provides lots of twists and turns on our beautiful campus. Lots of nature to see right in our own backyard.

Besides our practice for the run, our good friend, Physical Ed - sent Mrs. Keily a HUGE packet of things we needed to learn about. He has us working on learning about - speeds (slow, medium and fast), levels (low, middle, high), directions (up and down, forward and backward, right and left, clockwise and counter-clockwise) and finally, pathways (zig-zag, curved, diagonal and straight). Once we learned about each of these elements we practiced them using our locomotor movements of walk, run, skip, gallop, hop, jump and slide. Boy, there are lots of ways we can move our bodies! Then we experimented with a ribbon wand to use these different movement qualities, wow - was it fun to see all the colorful wands moving in our gym!!!



1st Grade

Health is another part of our physical education curriculum. This is an opportunity for me to go to the children's classroom and we are able to discuss or learn concepts that will help us stay healthy in many different ways. Our first lesson focused on showing courtesy. We talked about the importance of using courtesy words like, please, thank you, excuse me and your welcome. We heard a story about Mean Jean the Recess Queen and how she was mean to all the children until a new student came to the school and wanted Mean Jean to play with her - and sure enough, Mean Jean became nice to the new student as well as the rest of the kids. Friday's focus is on telling - we will discuss the Three D's for telling. First grader love to tattle or tell on one another, and in this lesson we will talk about talking out our problems or trying to solve them on our own, unless 1) something is dangerous, or 2) something is destructive or 3) something is disturbing. This way children will realize that they don't have to tattle, they can work lots of these little issues out on their own, however they should realize that adults are there to help out if one of the three D's do come up!



2nd Grade

In Health we talked about how each of us is special, and sometimes we might wish we could be something different. We heard the story "I Wish I were a Butterfly." In the story the cricket wished that he could be a butterfly, however as the wise spider told him, he liked him just like he was, and that he was special just the way he was. At the end of the story, a butterfly flew by and heard the beautiful music the cricket was making and she said "I wish I were a cricket." To finish the lesson, I had the children answer six questions about things they liked and we had a short discussion about how much so many of us had in common. The children seemed to enjoy and were even a bit surprised at how many things they had in common with their classmates. Friday's lesson focus is on giving compliments. We will discuss how important it is to give compliments to one another to show and let others know how we appreciate them. The children will have an opportunity to compliment their classmates when we make a class compliment chain. The compliments will be put together to form a class chain that the classrooms can add onto as the school year goes on - I wonder how long this chain will get?



3rd & 4th Grade

Both grades have begun to work on their Muscle Booklets. In third grade the students study six body systems of the body, one of them being the muscular system. It occurred to me that we really short changed the muscles during our health lesson so I thought what better way than to have the children learn the muscles and learn some different ways to exercise those muscles. In the introduction to the booklet I put together for the children, we learned that we have two types of muscles - voluntary and involuntary. The children learned that voluntary muscles move because we want them too. Involuntary muscles work without us even thinking about them moving - like our heart muscle. Our first muscle we learned about this week was the bicep muscle. First we locate the muscle on our body and then we learned four exercises that we performed using our 1 lb. weights and the exer-tube bands. We did bicep curls, hammer, side curls and single bicep curls using the bands. Vocabulary we discussed were "rep" - one complete movement of an exercise and a "set" which is a group of repetitions performed without resting. I believe the children will have a better appreciation of their muscles and will know lots of different ways to exercise the muscles in their bodies not to mention how they will be working on developing their strength.

General Information

• Homecoming Fun Run - Wednesday, September 30th. See the flyer in the electronic Friday Folder, there should be a map attached as well. Come cheer on our runners!
• Health Education Center Visits - 1st, 2nd and 3rd grader will take a field trip to the Health Education Center the week of October 26th.
• Ice Skating for 1st and 2nd graders begins - Tuesday, October 13th. Check to see if your child's skate fit, have good laces and are sharpened for this fun opportunity on the ice!We will need parent volunteers to help tie skates - please volunteer when your room sponsor calls!!!