Developmental Physical education.

Physical education is supposed to teach kids how their body moves, and how to control. With time physical education should progress and all your motor skills you learned at a young age, running, jumping, hopping should help you with activities that involve multiple movements. The physical education setting should be social and safe for the children. The main goals of physical education is to learn movement skills and enhance physical activity and these skills. It is also important to improve learning as a whole and contribute to growth as humans. My own physical education program didn't really do any of these things. Since I was in 6th grade we pretty much did the same routine. The same activities every fall, winter and spring. There was no flexibility and because of this my PE failed me.I think I missed out on some activities that I have learned in Cortland. We never did gymnastics, tennis, self defense, dance, or even hockey. Everyone hated PE in my high school because we did the same activities year after year. Even from this picture I found on the internet it is clear that PE programs have become so sports oriented that many programs only do basketball, football, volleyball and sports instead of mixing it up. This is not going to get every kid involved, what if you don't like basketball, baseball, and sports then your not going to enjoy PE. Needs to be more flexibility, have activities like rock climbing, dance, gymnastics instead of team sports.

Ways to make dodgeball a better game.

Dodge ball definitely deserves to be in the hall of shame of PE games. The game singles kids out, bullying occurs and at times there isn't much activity. I think at times kids are literally scared to participate in PE when the activity is dodge ball. I remember when i was in high school, kids would hide in the back behind kids cause they were scared. Another thing I experienced when playing dodge ball which i never liked was when everyone would just throw at one kid, even if he wasn't the last kid. These are the flaws with dodge ball, but I think as future Physical Educators we can fix some of the flaws and still have this entertaining game for kids.

 We discussed this in adventure activity last year some of the solution's we came up with are to first off have multiple activities for the kids to do, don't make kids play dodge ball when they are scared or don't want too. Another way to make it better is to play a gauntlet style. Split the class into 3 groups, have 2 groups line up arms length away from each other. have the students either side of the gym facing each other. So group 1 will be facing group 2, like a human tunnel. The third group will sprint through the tunnel, from foul line to foul line, this would add more activity. But instead of just throwing the ball, which could be dangerous have the kids either throw it underhand, or a fun solution is the kids can throw it as hard as they want but it has to bounce once before it hits the kid. This takes some of the velocity of the ball but still keeps it fun. One way to take away the singling out part of dodge ball is to make it so the kids have to throw at different kids each time, so every one can't pick on the same kids. I also think depending on skills the kid should be split up, so all the kids with good arms shouldn't be on the same teams, and vice-versa. Some kids do love dodge ball and I don't think they should be denied the game completely but the game needs to be modified to get rid of it's flaws.

Lab 1, Wow PE is fun!

I really enjoyed my experience in lab. It was really fun interacting with the kids and playing with them. The students had a lot of energy and it seemed like they were all having a lot of fun. The students skill range varied depending on age and gender. Every kid i observed seemed to have basic running, hopping and jumping skills down. The older the kids were the more advanced they were. I also noticed that the older they were the more they played sports like basketball and soccer where the little kids mainly play tag, house and a variety of games with action figures. I was a little nervous how the kids would react to us being there. When I first walked in I heard a few comments from the kids. They said like "who are these people.'' and different comments like that. But all the kids I had the chance to work with were very easy going and didn't give me a hard time.  I know that there will be some kids who will not be as easy to work with, i am excited for the challenge of getting them to do activities and have a good time just like everyone else. 

I interacted with a lot of different kids on Wednesday's lab. I played basketball with a 4th grader named Ashley. I played tag outside with Chris and a number of other kids who got involved once he saw we were playing. I also Played house with Sarah and some other young girls. It was a lot of fun interacting with all the kids. I played with more kids but I am having a hard time remembering all their names. Next class I am going to really try to remember all the kids names that I interact with.

When is it too young?

It is only natural for parents to push sports such as baseball, lacrosse on to their children at a young age. It has almost become a tradition to teach sports that we love to our children. Fathers just love the thought of having a catch with their sons or daughter's, it is a fun and enjoyable thing for parents to do. Participating in sports that involve using a stick could be detrimental to children if they start too young. Most children muscles aren’t developed enough to catch and throw effectively until at least age 6. Before using sticks in sports children should effectively learn how their bodies move and how to control their movements. Kids shouldn’t be so sports oriented at a young age. They need to develop and learn how to effectively move. Playing baseball and playing lacrosse involves being more coordinated and involves the whole body. I think it is detrimental to kid’s health to participate in these sports to early.
This article talks about what age children should start participating in sports.