St. Mary's Lab Three : LEAP, JUMP, SLIDE !!!

October 8, 2008: Today was the day I was supposed to present and lead my activity game to the St. Mary's kids in hopes of getting them to perform the activities of Leaping, Horizontal Jumping, and Sliding. I had dreamed up a game in my head a few days earlier and put it down in a lesson plan. My students were going to be frogs. They were going to do all of these motor skill tasks on "Froggy's Adventure Course", a simulation of a day in the life of Froggy the frog, accompanied by the song, "Froggy Went A' Courtin"..... The students were going to go through a three part course in "Froggy Land" where they were to jump from lily pad to lily pad (onto hula hoops), leap over floating logs in the marsh (over stretched out jump ropes on the floor), and finally slide through the trees on shore (cones zig zagging on the floor). The plan was set. I was ready.... or was I? I was shocked to see a group before me having the same students do almost the exact same course (the theme was a little different). WOWWWWWWW...... did I learn a valuable lesson in PE lesson preparation: YOU BETTER HAVE A BACK-UP PLAN........ ALWAYS. I rebounded with another game and it was successful in the fact that the students all had fun and all performed the required motor skill tasks for assessment. The downside was the unnecessary stress of scrambling for a game when I should have been more prepared with a back-up plan.