Semester in review at St. Mary's

Looking back on volunteering this semester at St. Mary's, what I benefitted from the most was definitely experience. Simply being up in front of the students, explaining and conducting an activity helped me grow the most as a teacher candidate. There were high points and low points while at St. Mary's, games that were busts and ones that were hits among them. Some games and activities went over well with the kids and seemed to be a success, this was definitely a confidence booster. However, there were times that the kids didn't like the games and they didn't do so well, this was frustrating and upsetting. I learned that it is important to be ready for almost anything, from limited space and large numbers to lack of enthusiasm from the kids. All in all, I had lots of fun being at St. Mary's and my time there was very beneficial to furthering my education as a teacher candidate. It is important to take everything we do and experience and learn from it and become better because of it. Never stop learning, never stop moving!

Final week at St. Mary's

This week at St. Mary's was different from previous weeks because we did not have an obvious theme and did not conduct games and assess locomotor skills like other weeks. We again were relegated to half of the gym because of a girl's basketball practice; luckily however, there were far fewer kids. While some of the groups played with the kids, the few that were there, my group, the hypoer dragons, decorated the gym doors and put up our collages. It was fun and interesting to play what the kids wanted to play this week, as opposed to games we planned for them.

Thanksgiving at St. Mary's

This week, Lab 5, was a tough one at St. Mary's. There was a girls basketball practice going on in one half of the gym so the after school program was relegated to just one half of the gymnasium. Not only were we limited to half of the gym but there was also a larger number of kids than usual. Combined with the nature of our activites because of the locomotor skills we were trying to have performed and the limited space with increased attendance made for a hectic afternoon. When trying to facilitate kicking and bouncing skills, a large space is preferable; this helps with the flow as well as safety of the activities. With the limited space it meant the activites didn't flow as smoothly, the skills couldn't be demonstrated as well but fortunately there were no injuries as a result. My group, hyper dragons were the special projects group this week. After observing the locomotor skills for Lab 5, we were pegged with the task of interviewing students and kids. Our questions were about how they benefited from coming to St. Mary's, how they've changed and what they've learned throughout the semester, as well as some of their favorite activities. With these questions and answers we put together a newsletter for St. Mary's. As the special projects group, we also had a closing game, song/dance, and a cheer. All of these went well in my opinion, although by this time there were very few, close to none, kids left. The kids really seemed to like our Thanksgiving themed song/dance, "The Turkey Song". Gobble, gobble St. Mary's!

Halloween at St. Mary's

This past week at St. Mary's was an interesting one with it being two days after Halloween. The kids really loved our costumes and this made it very easy to play games with the Pre-K students while "in character". While it was fun to run around and play outside with the Pre-School kids, I was disappointed that the weather was so nice because it meant we went outside. Going outside to play meant that I didn't get to read the book I brought. It was a Halloween themed book that I thought the kids would really like. Later on in the gym when many of the kids were playing I did however get the chance to read it to two boys who seemed to enjoy it.

Getting Up and Running

Getting started was late but I found it to be easy and fun to develop and customize my blog. Creativity isn't my strong suit so coming up with a blog title, designing the blog and being creative with posts, etc. takes some work.