PE Happenings

Another couple of busy weeks in the gym! Enjoy reading about what your child is doing in PE!
Senior Kindergarten
Integrating the alphabet and word families made for lots of fun last week. We have been working on and refining our locomotor movements (skip, gallop, hop, jump, run, slide and walk)so I joined the activities by having students move around the gym to music and then when asked to freeze, the children were given a word that they would write the starting letter onto their papers. Secondly, the children were given a card with five of the word families listed on it. The students would move down to a pile of consonant cards on the opposite side of the gym, bring it back to their paper and card to see if they could form any words - WOW!, the children did a GREAT job. Integration of concepts learned in the classroom and then practiced in a different way sometimes helps the child learn or understand these concepts in a new an fun way.

This week we have been working on upper body strength, we practiced doing pull ups which the children will need to perform next year in first grade as part of their fitness test. We have also finished up on activities started last week using hula hoops, doing all sorts of challenges and games. This week we began doing balancing and tossing to targets with beanbags. These activities we are doing have a little "earth day" connection in that we discuss helping endangered animals. We pretend to be horseshoe crabs, sea turtles and the Northern Cricket Frog (right here in Wisconsin). In our first beanbag activity the children are collecting beanbags using a crab walk and bringing the beanbags to their home (a hoop - the bean bags are the food). The next game, for the frogs and turtles was to get them to a lilly pad so that they had a safe home. Lots of fun to try and toss those turtle and frog bean bags and have them land in a hoop. Oh what fun to be in Senior Kindergarten!

1st and 2nd Grade
Soccer is our focus unit right now. Since our weather has turned more April like we have been indoors. Hopefully next week it will be a little warmer to get outdoors. We have been working on the trap, toe taps, dribbling and maneuvers of step over's and pull back's. It's sometimes hard to control the ball on the gym floors, however, the children are doing their best to work on their skills and control the ball on the flat smooth surface. We have also been using these skills to work on spelling words. Dribbling and spelling the words, doing toe taps and spelling - all just a fun way to practice skills and learn those spelling words.
Health this week for 1st Grade - We looked at the food guide pyramid again and tried our hand at sorting food into their groups. To further practice this skill we were in the computer lab and played Simon's Pyramid Game. I sent the web address for this game so the children could play it again at home. The children enjoyed the game!
2nd Grade Health we have learned the parts of the ear and we watched a video to see how the sound waves make it through the ear and what that cochlea does to get the sounds off to the auditory nerve. Our next lesson on the ear we will take another look at sound waves and ear safety.

3rd and 4th Grade
Last week the students completed their jump rope units. The third graders worked on learning different jump rope patterns and finished the unit working and learning how to enter and exit a long rope. The fourth graders polished up the skills that they liked to perform and then combined these skills to put together a 30 second jump rope routine. The students were to have at least 5 skills, smooth transitions, 30 seconds of performance and finally have their routine memorized. I have video taped them and hope to get them in a format for you to see.

This week has been our week to focus once again on Fitness. We took a look at the Physical Activity Pyramid. The four levels suggest what we need to do to stay active 60 minutes or more a day. The four levels are everyday activities, aerobic activities, flexibility/muscular activities and finally sedentary activities. It is suggested that children should not spend more than two hours doing sedentary activities during their day without getting up and doing some type of physical activity. Once we had the information, we have been working hard on activities in levels two and three. We are monitoring our pedometer steps (children should get 12,000 or more steps a day.) Over 1,500 during our thirty minute PE time is really quiet good!

Health -
Third graders did their introduction to the skeletal system. We learned some details about our bones, such as 206 bones in our bodies, bones come together at joints, some of our bones create the blood cells, bones are light - but strong, they are the framework of our body. Bones provide protection for our delicate organs. We will begin to label some of the key bones I would like the students to learn. We continue to learn about the muscles (this week the deltoids muscle) and learn about ways we can exercise these muscles.
Fourth graders met in gender groups to discuss specific "teen transitions" that are pertinent for fourth graders. Hopefully the children came home with questions. Or you may want to ask them about their discussions. Remember, that this is an ongoing discussion, children may have lots of questions and they want to learn the right things from people they trust! The boys group which I was a part of did a wonderful job listening to Mr. Salerno and were willing to share comments and ask questions. I heard from Mrs. Griffin that the girls group went very well too, lots of good questions. We sure were proud of our 4th grade students!

National Physical Education week is coming up (May 1 - 7). As part of the celebration week we would like to invite our 1st - 4th graders to try their hand at an essay. The topic is "What Does Physical Education Mean to Me." Information is available in this week's Friday Folder if your child would like to participate - we are hoping for lots of responses!