Happy Easter St. Mary's!

For our fifth lab at St. Mary's we had an Easter theme. Easter was the previous Sunday, the day before our lab on Monday. The students at St. Mary's were very excited to tell us about their Easter Sunday's and how they went. All of the students seemed to have a great Easter and loved the fact that they got to eat candy. You could tell they had plenty from all their energy at lab on Monday. Before we went into our groups we observed two students perform the dribbling and kicking skills. We assessed these students with a rubric from our motor development class. Both a female student and male student were being assessed by the Cortland students during the activity. Erica and Jason the two students being assessed were both able to complete and perform the required skills. The only difference between the two students was the ability to perform the skill correctly with the right cues. Jason was able to perform the dribbling of a basketball skill better in terms of following the cues compared to Erica. Her ability to do the proper cues while dribbling needed a little help and technique. Once she was properly shown she was able to perform the skill better but still needed more practice time to better her performance. When it came to the kicking of a ball Erica had great form and technique. Her ability to kick the ball correctly with all the cues was outstanding. Every kick she took had all the necessary cues that are needed to properly kick a ball. Jason was very impressive as well, the only improvement Jason needed to do was working on his follow through as well as inclining his trunk backward during contact of the ball. Both students did a great job with the skill assessment today all around. After the skill assessment we went into our groups. My group was working with the pre-k today. This was my first time working with the pre-k students, needless to say i was pretty excited. Our group split up and Brittney and I went into one classroom while Rob and Austin went into the other classroom. Brittney had planned a great craft for them. The craft was a brown paper bag easter bunny. This involved coloring the easter bunny, gluing him to the paper bag and putting cotton on the Easter bunny. The students loved the craft. Right away we had students wanting to participate in the craft just by showing them a finished project and very quickly we got more and more students participating in the craft. Because we had the whole class doing the craft, it too a little longer and before we knew it, it was time for snack for the kids so we all helped clean up including the students, they went and washed their hands and came back for snack. We still had a few minutes left once the kids had the snack so I was able to read the students a book which I feel the students enjoyed very much. Now onto the gymnasium where the physical activity begins. We started our group out with a game by Rob. I thought Rob did a phenomenal job this week with getting the students enthusiastic about the game and ready to play. You could tell that Rob had all of their attention and the students were all wanting to play his game. The next activity we played was mine. I had a little more trouble getting the students to listen to me at first. The students were still following Rob instead of listening to me. Once i got the students settled down and sitting in front of i was able to quickly explain what we would be doing and started the game right away. My game used more cognitive domain aspect as the students need to match up the same color eggs as well as the same sizes before doing a locomotor movement back to their bunny holes. Overall i feel that my activity went well. This week's lab I would have to say was one of the best one's so far. There was so much enthusiasm and energy from all of the Cortland students which in return had the St. Mary's students very enthusiastic about the activities. I didn't see every group but the ones I did see, I have to applaud everyone and say Great Job!