Mrs. Garrabrant's Classroom: Sports, Guest Speakers & Clay Equipment

We have been working hard this week in Kindergarten! We were very excited to be able to go outside for 3 days this week!

Mrs. Myers allowed the children to dig in her garden and they found worms. They were very exited! When we were finished observing, we put them back in their home so they could survive.

In Art class on Monday, we added arms to our wire people. The students drew their arms, tried to shape them and posed in order to show Mrs. Pinto how they wanted them to be positioned on their person. They all did such a great job and our wire people look fantastic!

Take a look at some of their sketches and how close their wire person turned out to them! Below is a figure skater and someone doing archery.

Below: the person on the left is taking part in a field activity, shot put. The other person is doing the rings in gymnastics.

Below is Jaden demonstrating how to throw a football along with his sketch and wire person.

Elleigh's person is doing Karate and chopping wood. Braydon's person is also doing Karate and is kicking.

Isabella's person is doing a hand stand in gymnastics.

We continued making our sports equipment out of clay. The students first got some clay and then rolled or squished it out to make their shape.

We used books as resources to make our pieces of equipment as accurate as possible. Amir & Jayden below are making ice skates and using the book to make sure they get the shape correct.

After their object is made, we get some water on our fingers and smooth out all of the cracks and lines.

Then we have our completed object. Below is Kaylee with her shot put ball for field and Madison with her baton for track.

You can see Isabella's pummel horse and Betsy's skating rink.

Nadia made a gold medal and Jaden made the football goal posts.

Our rock climbing group has made their rock climbing wall and now we just have to add our details to it!

We began the 5th book in our sports fairies series and now they are trying to retrieve Samantha's swimming goggles back from the goblins. Ask your child to tell you about the story in order to practice their reading comprehension skills!

We had a few visitors this week who came to talk to us about sports! The first one was Mr. Doyle, our P.E. (Physical Education) teacher. We made a list of questions beforehand that we wanted to ask him, such as: What made you want to be a P.E. teacher? Where do you get your equipment from? What do you know about sports? What exercises should we do before we play sports? etc.

On Friday, we had 4 coaches/ players from the Dayton Dutch Lions come to our classroom to talk to us about soccer, answer our questions, and show us some tricks! Some of the questions we asked them were: Why can only the goalie touch the ball? What are your uniforms? What equipment do you need? What are the rules in soccer? Do you know any tricks? What made you want to become a soccer coach & player? etc.

They showed us how to head the ball back and forth and taught us how you are supposed to use your forehead, not the top of your head. That way you can see the ball! After they showed this to us, they called on a few volunteers to demonstrate.

Even Mrs. Scherch & I got in on the fun!

They also showed us how to properly kick the ball. One of our questions was what is your body supposed to look like when you kick the ball? They showed us what part of your foot to use if you wanted to kick the ball straight as well as curve it. Again, once they showed this to us they called on a few volunteers to come up and demonstrate.

One of the questions we asked was if they could dribble the ball on their foot and knee. They were able to do this trick and showed the students. We also had volunteers get to come up and try it as well!

The last thing we talked about were celebration dances. The coaches talked about how their favorite part about playing soccer is after they score a goal because they get to celebrate. They demonstrated a celebration dance and the students quickly had lots of ideas in their minds about what their own celebration dance would be. A few of the students went up and shot a goal through one of the coaches legs and then got to show their own celebration dance. Ask your child to show you their celebration dance!

The Dayton Dutch Lions were very kind to leave us a shirt for all of us! The students were also able to choose either a soccer ball or lanyard to take home as well. We really enjoyed their visit and are very grateful for their generosity! We learned a lot and had fun learning about soccer.