Tag, Your It (Orig Date Feb 10, 2010)

Today was our first official lab for our Motor Development class. I wasn't as nervous as I thought I would be, since we were informed of what kind of games to come to class with ahead of time. At the summer camp I worked at, we played a different kind of tag game at least once a week. I liked how the lab assistants helped us in the beginning getting the kids into the tag games. Once we had our group on our own, the students didn't listen as much. We started off playing blob tag, but it didn't work out as well, since the students didn't fully understand the game. A lot of the students wanted to play hide & seek, and duck duck goose. I then led the students in a game of frozen ant tag, which they played for a little while. However, they seemed easily distracted by the student's playing basketball on the other side of the court. I told the students that if they played our games, that we could play duck duck goose when we were done. This motivated them to play the game a little longer, but the student's wanted to play duck duck goose. We played that until it was time to go to the cafeteria.

The student's were much calmer in the cafeteria, and it gave me a better chance to interact with them more. There was one student J, who I got to know pretty well during a game of checkers. After that game, I went over and watched some of the other students draw Valentine's Day cards, which was nice, since it had to do with a current theme. After this was free time, and I felt this went very well. I was able to play catch with a student, N, and while we were playing catch, others joined us as well. Some of the other student's couldn't throw the ball properly, so I showed them the proper way to throw. While they may not have gotten the skill down, they seemed excited to learn, and play catch.

There were a few things that I could've done better today. I felt that I could've gotten to know the student's a little better then I did. I was able to get to know a few of them, but I felt I could've found out their interests a little better. This is one thing that I will know that I need to improve on next time. I felt that I was able to find out what games they like to play the most. It was just like my camp, as a majority of the younger students wanted to play duck duck goose. I felt having prior experience at the camp, that I was able to prepare for this lab the way I did. On my first day of camp, I didn't have a backup plan for the younger campers, and the station did not work at all. I had to bail out, and let them play on the playground for the rest of the station. Here, when blob tag didn't work out, I was able to have a game prepared right there for the students. That's one thing with any age group, not just the younger students, you should always have a plan b, c, d, incase something doesn't work out. I enjoyed today's experience, and I feel that I'm going to go into each lab having better knowledge of what to do. I'm going to learn from my mistakes, and I will find out more about the student's interests in the next lab. Always learn from your mistakes, and fix them.