I hope we all had a great time in the pool over the last two weeks? It was great to see how much confidence has improved and new skills we have all learnt.
Now it is time to change venues for the last time this semester. We are going to be on the covered court for the last two weeks… So please make sure you bring your water up with you as it gets super hot and sweaty up on the third floor.
Have a great weekend
Coach Chapman
We all had a great time watching a local Synchro Team. They made all the skills look so easy, until we all had a go ourselves. Coach Gem taught us all some elegant moves in the water. So I hope everyone will be showing them off and practicing them at home.
Coach Chapman
All Coach Chapman’s classes are doing Gymnastics next. So make sure you bring water as usual and have shoes that you can take off and put back on easily.
We are there for two weeks……. And then……… Off to the pool.
Have a great weekend everyone.
Coach Chapman
Kindergarten, Grade 2 and Grade 3 are currently doing a Dance Unit.
In Kindergarten we are exploring the ways we can move our body’s and have been energetically skipping, running, bopping, hopping, wriggling, shaking and many more fun movements the Sharks, Golden Dragons and Dolphins have been devising to move to our funky beats.
Grade 2 have been identifying and suggesting a whole variety of dance styles. We have been exploring different movements and body shapes to different tempos of music. The Playful Puppies and Smarties have been using pictures and their own knowledge to have a go and connect lots of dance styles to different music. Some have even been dancing in the style of Stomp to classical mussic.
Grade 3 have been exploring different dance styles as well. They are also devising their own routines now and useing different equipment to jazz up their performance. This has included neon scarves, ribbons, hoops, and even basketballs.
Below is a clip from the film Street Dance and is a mix of hip hop and ballet. I think they may have stolen a few ideas from the Firey Serpants and Mind Magicians!
I hope everybody had a fun and active break? If you did, don’t forget to keep sending in pictures, there is still space on the ES board. Downsize the image to a jpeg and email to me at chapmanh@ismanila.org please.
We are currently starting new units of work in PE and here are some of the comments The Champions had about Fitness.
Grade 4 Fitness
What do you know or feel about fitness?
“Urgh I’m not fit”
“Not fun”
“I love fitness, it’s cool”
“yoga”
“Are you going to test us?”
“It’s good to be strong”
“Do we use machines?”
As you can see there were some mixed reactions to fitness. This unit will be emphasising that keeping fit and healthy can be done in many different ways. We will be learning about how the heart, lungs and muscles work to get our bodies moving, and how activity increases their function to improve three major fitness components, Stamina, Strength and Flexibility. The Champions already know how to take their Heart Rate and can explain what effect activity has on it. Let’s hope some of the responses at the end of the unit will be a little different and everyone will see how much exercise and benefit they get from the activities they already do and love.
Keep raising those Heart Rates Super Stamina Dudes!
Coach Chapman
Dear Parents,
The ES PE department is updating one of our bulletin boards outside the Little Theater and we would like to find out and celebrate all the ways children are physically active outside of school hours. One of our PE standards is to promote regular physical activity outside that of scheduled PE lessons.
We will be asking children to complete the following sentences in PE lessons and recording their responses. You can also ask your child and send us their responses or simply share any information with us about the ways your child is physically active so we can celebrate this with them. Often we have some amazing talent or achievements that we may not know about! (this includes parents – so feel welcome to send us your own photos or favorite sports – as the students would enjoy seeing see that on display as well!)
Sentence Starters to use:
Every day I….. (Example; walk run skip swim, bike ride etc)
I like to ….
My favorite way to be active is…..
One of the activities I do every week is …… (Example; Ballet, Golf lesson, tennis lesson, play badminton)
My favorite sport to play is………….(Example; Cricket, Baseball)
We would also love you to send in any photos you have of your child being physically active. This may be playing individual or team sports, having lessons in tennis, golf, swimming etc or simply dancing, bike riding, hula hooping or jumping rope! As long as they are moving! You can place photos in an envelope and send to school with your child’s name on the back and addressed to Holly Chapman, Elementary School Physical Education or simply e-mail me at chapmanh@ismanila.org with the photo as an attachment. Please rename the photo with your child’s name and grade and resize if it is in megabytes before you send digitally.
Lastly, we have a website which has a list of the activities children can become involved in and around Manila. This was put together through our conversations with parents and children. Check out http://sportsmanila.wikispaces.com/
Thanks to the parents that were able to attend Student Led Conferences or Spotlight on Specials this past week. If you were unable to attend please feel welcome to join us in a PE lesson on another time.
Yours Sincerely,
Coach Chapman
What do we learn in PE?
This week we have had parents come to visit us in our classes as part of our ‘Spotlight On Specials’ and ‘Student Led Conferences’. To an untrained eye it looks like children play some games and learn some skills – while this is partly true all our games are carefully chosen with a purpose in mind. For example my Grade 4 class is playing continuous cricket as part of a lengthy “Game Sense unit” . Students in Grade 4 are exploring the concept of games sense across the four categories of games.
In cricket this week we are no longer focusing on the motor skills of batting and bowling and fielding but on the decisions we make when playing striking and fielding games. Students are asked questions such as
In the early years in Kindergarten and Grade 1 children do learn to throw, catch, kick, dribble, balance, jump etc but they also learn about safety, taking turns, sharing and there is a lot of language learning which we call ‘movement vocabulary’ that children are developing. If your child knows the difference between an underhand and overhand throw and they know to step forward with the opposite foot when throwing, and they actually know what the word ‘opposite’ means, the chances are they learnt this in PE. If they can name the parts of the body and the directions we can move our body and the actions we can do with our body then this is part of their developing movement vocabulary.
It is recommended that kids get at least 60 minutes of physical activity each day, with most of it being moderate intensity aerobic physical activity.
The National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE) even offers physical activity recommendations for toddlers and preschoolers. Toddlers should get at least 30 minutes of structured physical activity and at least 60 minutes of unstructured physical activity each day. Preschoolers need a little more exercise — at least 60 minutes of structured physical activity and at least 60 minutes of unstructured physical activity each day.
Unfortunately, many kids don’t meet these daily recommendations for exercise and physical activity, which is one of the big reasons why so many kids are overweight.
A lack of opportunity to play outside or join a sports team, or simply preferring to watch TV and play video games are some of the reasons why many kids don’t get more exercise. That’s why many parents get excited about the idea of active video games, or exergames, like Wii Boxing or Dance Dance Revolution for the Wii, PlayStation3 or XBox 360, to help kids burn calories.
While a study a few years ago did show that playing active video games could be as effective as moderate physical activity, a new study that will be published in the March issue of Pediatrics, “Impact of an Active Video Game on Healthy Children’s Physical Activity,” found that there is “no reason to believe that simply acquiring an active video game under naturalistic circumstances provides a public health benefit to children.”
The problem with active video games seems to be the same with actually exercising, you have to actually be motivated to play the exergames.
In the study, kids were given a Wii and either two active video games, such as EA Sports Active, Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party 3, or Wii Fit Plus, etc., or two inactive video games, including Madden NFL 10, Mario Kart Wii, or Super Mario Galaxy, etc. Unfortunately, the kids who got the active video games were not any more active over a 12-week period than the kids who got the inactive video games.
That doesn’t mean that you can’t use exergames to help get your kids more active, but you almost certainly can’t expect that one of these games is going to be a quick fix for a kid who is a couch potato. Instead, you will likely have to motivate and encourage your kids to play their exergames, just like you do to get their more active in real-life. It might also help to:
It might especially be a good idea to use exergames to supplement active free play or outdoor exercise instead of simply trying to replace all other activities. This can also be helpful when it is too hot, cold, or wet to go outside and play, or because your child’s sport is out of season.
chapmanh