PE Fun - for the week of Nov. 30th

Senior Kindergarten
In SK this past week we have finished our underhand throwing unit with one of our first major assessments. Most of the children have the skill well in hand (no pun intended). We did a number of stations this past work that would provide lots of practice at various targets like tossing at the shapes posters on the wall that they have been working on in math, buckets, wall targets, tic tac toe, making fruit salad (when the children tossed a bean bag into a bucket, they earned a piece of play fruit to make their fruit salad), color recognition (tossing the correct color bean bag at the color target). We concluded the unit by playing their favorite underhand game "Oscar's Garbage Can" and then a new game, Pizza Pie Surprise, where the students are trying to toss the ingredients (bean bags) onto the pizza crusts (hula hoops). Boy did we have some pretty tasty looking pizza's made!

1st and 2nd Grades
Jump Rope is our current unit and the children will be working on becoming proficient jumpers. Jump Rope is a great cardio type activity and an excellent way to warm the body up for physical activity. Each grade level has a jump rope sheet where the children are challenged to perform jump rope stunts up to ten times in a row (some of the skills require 20 or more jumps). Once the student is prepared to show their skills they ask a classmate to watch and count their skills. If the child is successful he she earns a sticker to put in that skill box. This allows for students to become better observers to give feedback to their peers and also works on the skills of honesty and respect of their classmates. The children will be able to assess each classmate once during these challenges. At each grade level the children are also asked to perform a designated amount of consecutive jumps in a row and upon completing this they earn the coveted toe tag for this unit. For the first grade they are required to perform 10 jumps and the second grade perform 25 jumps. The toe tage is the number they jumped - check out your child's tennis shoes to see if they have earned their tag yet!

3rd and 4th grades
We concluded our throwing unit this past week with our assessments. Watch for these coming home in a week or so. We will ask that parent's sign off on their assessment sheet and return it to me at school. Our current unit is floor hockey. Our primary focus in the third grade is to work on passing to a team mate. We have done many passes with our partners and now will begin putting those skills into games. As for the 4th graders they will be looking at strategies that they will use in small 2 vs. 2 games. This is one of the first opportunities they have had to use offensive and defensive strategies.
I also introduced the children to the third muscle in our attempt to learn specific exercises to strengthen those muscles. Working on the Rectus Adominal muscles the students will learn seven different exercises that they will use to help strengthen their core muscles that assist with posture as well as aid in breathing. Ask your child to show you some great abdominal exercises - it's never too late to work on those abs!