Circus Comes To Town

This time at St. Mary's we did a circus theme with many people wearing clown type hair. The kids seemed more interested in wearing the hair than anything else. Being a circus theme the kids sure acted that way. This was the first time that I had ever seen these children so hyper and amped up. When my group was in the gym we had a very difficult time trying to claim these kids down. They were running everywhere and didn't want to sit down when we spoke to them or quiet down. It was interesting to see that some children really wanted to listen to the games we had planned for them and so to get the rest of their classmates quiet they would scream BE QUIET!! Ultimately, this just created more noise and we found that by saying "if you can hear me clap twice", and gradually they would quiet down. Luckily, our group came in with lots of different games to play and it's a good thing we did. Since the kids were mostly doing what they wanted it was hard to play a game for very long so we kept modifying games and switching to new ones to keep the kids guessing and on their toes. This week in lab we were assessing how well the kids could catch and throw. We played a game similar to messy back yard which allowed us to see how well they threw over hand and to see if they could catch. After that game we switched it up to a slower paced game where they threw underhand and had to try and hit and land in a target. Since they were around 1st and 2nd graders we used hula hoops as their target but if they were older we coul

d have used poly spots. After seeing some of the kids throw we knew not to make the targets any smaller because they had a hard time as it was. Overall with the kids being so wild this week it was good to see in a way. This just shows you what you will really face when you teach. Sometimes the children will not always behave the way you want them to so it's important to know how to deal with it and adjust to the situation.