Hippity Hoppity Easter's On It's Way!!

On Monday April 6, 2009, we had our sixth and final motor development lab at St. Mary's School Cortland. The theme of this week was the Easter holiday. Since this was the final lab, we weren't looking to observe any specific motor skills. Instead, each group was prepared with an activity and props that related to Easter. As soon as we walked into the gymnasium and the kids saw the Easter eggs and bunny ears, they got excited for what was going to be a fun afternoon!

After the first group in the gymnasium set up and began their presentation, we were sent down to the cafeteria to interact with the kids and prepare our activity. With no motor skills being observed this week, we were free to design an activity any way we wanted to. On Sunday, our group Jumpin' Jack and the Thriving Five met together to plan out our activity and figure out what we needed. After a quick trip to the store, we had all of our things and were ready to go! In the cafeteria, rather than having the kids play Legos and checkers like they always do, we had them participate in two Easter related activities. For the first activity, "Put Your Egg on the Basket", we adapted pin the tail on the donkey into an Easter theme. We had the kids color paper cutouts of eggs then come over to the wall where a big picture of a basket hung. We would blindfold them nd have them tape it onto the basket the best they could. We were always there to make sure they didn't run into the wall or eachother so safety was covered. After this, we began a new activity called "Egg Relay". For this, we divided the kids into three groups. Each child was given a plastic egg and a spoon and the objective to get your team to get everyone's egg in the basket before the other teams did. One person from each group would be going at one time, carrying the egg on the spoon down to the basket They would walk with the egg then bunny hop back. If it dropped, they would start up from where they were. Eventually we added the modifications of carrying two eggs and walking backwards. When we completed the activity, each student got to keep an egg for a job well done!


After this, we went up into the gym for some open play time. There were many activites going on ranging from jump rope to football and the kids seemed to be enjoying themselves. Liam approached me and asked if we could play basketball again because he had enjoyed it so much the prior week. I was glad to play with him knowing that I made in impression on him the prior week. We had a free throw contest and threw the ball around. The kids then participated in a 'battleship' game where they were in four teams and attempted to knock the other team's pins over using dodgeballs. Everyone then came together and participated in the hokey pokey and a group picture ending yet another excellent afternoon.

After this experience, I realized how much I enjoy working in a school environment. There is plenty of excitement and always plenty of things going on. The kids genuinely listen to you and get something out of what you are teaching them. It is a very rewarding experience. I'm going to miss going to lab every week but I look forward to the future of my path toward teaching Physical Education!