Physical Education in December

This has been such a fun month, with so many exciting events scheduled for the children. The focus this month in our P.E classes has been the assessment and skill development of teaching hula hoop skills. The ability to rotate and jump through a hula hoop repetitively, while learning how to integrate the 2 bounce hop in-between jumps is an important coordination skill. While many of the children have difficulty with learning this skill, it is amazing and rewarding personally, to observe their growth in performing this complicated lead up skill. The importance of learning this basic skill is that it reinforces their skill of practicing to learn something hard and to learn that with a practice “attitude” of patience that they can improve which, they so need in learning anything that is difficult. The basic 2 bounce skill is also important in learning to coordinate and control your body in space while using other body parts in a coordinated manner and also for advanced jump roping skills later on as we introduce jump roping later on in Jan and Feb. They also had opportunities for hula hoop exploration to practice other fun hoop movements. We also play tag games related to the hula hoop use which all of the children found to be fun and everyone could find a level of success in playing their “game strategy”. Towards the end of the month we got to play some holiday theme games and please ask your child about ice skating on Baker Pond and the “snowball fight” that we had, and just sit back and observe the smile that is on their face as they tell you about it and you will get a small sense of their joy that they had when they were actually throwing those snowballs. Happy holidays Mr. Fantaroni Mr. Raudonaitis