acahperd

The ACAHPERD was today and it was great that the afternoon was devoted to sharing ideas with other p.e. teachers. I get so much more out of that short time of sharing than out of listening to people present. It's a great way to learn some new activities and they are things that you can incorporate into your curriculum immediately. I think another great part of the conference was that they scheduled it for Halloween. I was never happier to not be in school as I was today. Halloween is always such a crazy day at school so it was nice to be at a conference with adults, learning new things!

Healthy Snacks

The great apple crunch day was a success- The students had fun and it was a great reason to talk about nutrition and making healthy choices. I would like to have more days where the students get to try a variety of healthy snacks. I wonder if any company would be willing to give money to support a health snack a month for the students? It seems like it would be fun and it's great for the students to try new foods that they otherwise might not try.

fundraiser

The PTA fundraiser did not do very well for this year and they are trying to make an easy $10-15 thousand. Dicks Sporting Goods is willing to sponsor a "Walk across the country" event. They donated 750 pedometers and for one week in December we are going to track the steps that every student, teacher, and staff member takes during the school day. The students are going to ask people to sponsor them for any dollar amount and all of the profit goes to the PTA. If every student raises $20 then we will profit $15,000. We are going to make it a big deal, give the students passports and track every state that they go through. It should be a fun event for the students and give them a sense of pride for helping their school. We just hope it's as big of a success as we plan!

Conference

We attended the Butler County PE conference today and I was expecting a big turnout. I was really surprised that it was only about 8 people in addition to my classmates. I wonder if these workshops typically have a bigger turnout and if it was just because the conference was held on a rainy Saturday!? Either way, I was excited to learn more about DDR and Wii. I am going to apply for a grant to get a few of these systems to use during station work. It will be a fun change and it doesn't seem that particularly expense.

Elem Health

I am curious, do any of your school districts have a separate Health course in your Elementary buildings? We incorporate Health into our P.E., but do not have textbooks or a classroom to teach a Health class. We are currently on a 5 day rotating cycle and the students have PE 2 days, music, art and computers one day. We are proposing that next year there is a six day rotating cycle (just for one grade to try it out) so that students can get a health/guidance class. The new hire would teach a course on health, friendship, bullying... and more. Do any of your elementary students have a health class and how many days per week are your health and PE courses?

great apple crunch day

October 29th is the Great Apple Crunch Day, and I just placed my order for 700 apples. PTA and student council pay the bill and Soergels Orchard gives us a good deal and great apples. For the apple day, we pull all of the students from specials and talk about making healthy food choices. After we talk for a little while, the students hang out and eat the apples. It's funny- it seems so simple to us, but some of my students talk about it for the rest of the year. The love it! If any of you do anything creative for that day, please let me know!

community day

Yesterday North Hills had a community day and every activity/sport was able to set up a booth for $15. It seemed like a great way to fundraise and there were hundreds of people there all day. Every activity or team was able to set up an activity... so baseball had a dunk tank, basketball had a shooting contest, some other club had a toss a ping pong ball and win a gold fish. It was great and it seems like it would be a great fundraiser for a P.E. department. It seems like holding a "carnival night" in your school would be a great way to raise money. You can have people donate baked good, run contests, and sell merchandise. Does anyone run anything similar to this?

Soccer Activities

During out soccer unit we play a game called bubbles with our students. The students soccer ball turns into a "bubble" and if the bubble hits into the wall, bleachers, someones' feet, or into another bubble.. their bubble pops and they have to give their ball to someone in the out of bounds line. It's a fun game and the students really enjoy it. To add a little more excitement, we add student bubble poppers and their job is to walk around the gym and "pop" bubbles. With K-2, we spend the whole 3-4 weeks doing skills and activities, but don't play an actual "game". Do any of you play small sided games with your little ones?

Kindergarten

We have been talking to our curriculum director about Action Based Learning. I found out about this program from Alex and Kati during class and it seems great! Having 45 minutes of K two times a week is really a challenge. There are 50 Kindergarten students in the gym at one time and we struggle with ways to keep them active and on task. After learning about ABL, we are going to Fox Chapel next week to observe this program in action. I'm really excited and hope that it's great! Has anyone else worked with this program?

soccer

This week marked the end of physical fitness testing and we begin our soccer unit next week. I really enjoy teaching the soccer unit and the kids seem to have a blast with it. My favorite part is playing 7 on 7 with the older students. We have 2 games going on and have student refs. I think that it's important for the students to take on the role as ref. It gives them a different perspective and usually I have the students who tend to complain about calls ref first. This usually changes their approach during play and hopefully they carry that lesson with them during other competitive situations.