Games, Relays & Contests....

The first website that I had found was a website called Fun and Games.

This website offered a variety of different games all in on one web page. It not only had games that were centred around physical activity, which would be a great tool for physical education classes, but it also had games that didn't involve a lot of physical activity. Games that could be played in the classroom for other subjects and games that did not need a large space to play the games. I liked this website because it categorised all the games that it had under different links that you could click on. Having organised the website like this, would make it much easier for a teacher, camp counsellor or even a parent, to find the exact type of game they were looking for.

The second website I had found was a website based from a TV show called Zoom.

I thought I would include a website like Zoom because it was really geared toward children. It is a website linked to a TV show that is for kids, I even remember watching this TV show growing up and playing the games that they featured on each show. This website not only had an array of different type of games for children to chose from, but was super appealing to youth. The bright colours, the funky design of the website all made it a fun visual, which children really enjoy. I think that having a website that is appealing to kids and shows kids different types of activities they can play with their friends is a great tool for them to initiate their own participation in physical activity. Like the first website I found as well, this website is not limited to only physically active games. It listed other games like mind games and word games for children to chose from. Even though this website was geared towards children, I think this website could be a useful tool for educators to use as a resourcce for games.

The third website I had found was a website called Daily Physical Activity.

 

 

 

This website I think would be a great tool for physical education educators because it lists a variety of different games in alphabetical order. I also thought that having a search bar on this website would also be handy for teachers looking for a specific game or needing to look up some rules for a certain game. This website however, is definitely geared toward an adult audience. It is definitely not as bright and colourful as the previous website I had found. So, I think if children were to come upon this website they would not be too impressed by it. I also thought this website was a pretty good one because the number of different games it provided. The list that was provided on the website, had links for games starting with the letter A to the letter Z (the game list actually only went to the letter W, but still that's a large database of games to have!).

 

 

Finally, I had found this clip on YouTube of a polar bear going to the gym. If a polar bear attempts to go to the gym, I think everyone else can make that attempt!

 



 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Self Motivated and Self Directed Games

The first game that my group had developed needed 5 hula hoops, 5 hockey sticks and 1 indoor hockey ball. For this game, each person needed to have a hula hoop and a hockey stick. Four of the students would position their hula hoop about 3 meters away from each other and in the shape of a square and the fifth person would position their hula hoop in the very center of the 4 other hula hoops. Like so:

 

 

Each person would then grab their hockey sticks and stand inside one of the 5 hula hoops. The 4 students standing in the outer 4 hula hoops, would begin to pass the hockey ball amongst each other. The object of the game would be for the center person to try and intercept the passes from the 4 outside people and the 4 outside people would try to keep their passes away from the center person. The people in the outer hula hoops would have to keep both feet in at all times, while the middle person could have one foot out of the hula hoop and one foot inside the hula hoop.

 

 

If the middle person intercepted the pass between two people from an outside hula hoop the person to last touch the ball would than switch places with the person in the middle. If a person from one of the outside hula hoops had a bad pass to another person resulting in them having to step out of their hula hoop to retrieve the ball, the person who did the bad pass would have to switch places with the person in the middle.

This game I think would be a good game for children in grades 2 - 3, because it helps teach children hand eye coordination and does not require the pressure of much movement when doing it. A modification I think could be done to this game, would be to add another ball when passing amongst each other. Or by adding more players by making the playing area larger and adding more players on the outside and another person in the middle trying in intercept.

 

Another game that my group came up with needed  some cloth potato sacks, 2 hula hoops, some plastic paddles and a foam ball. The paddles that we used were like ping pong paddles but larger and plastic. To begin this game you will need to divide your group into two teams. (You wouldn’t want any more than 5 people per team so that everyone would get an equal amount of playing time, so the number of participants you had would determine the number of teams you would get.) In our group we had an odd number of people so for this game we played boys versus girls, which worked out to be 2 versus 3.

 

Once everyone was divided into 2 teams, the 2 hula hoops were positioned about 7 meters away from each other. The 2 hula hoops were the goals in the game. Each team had to try to get the foam ball into the opposing team’s hula hoop. You could hit the foam ball on the ground, using the paddle like a stick, you could bounce the ball on the paddle or you could balance the ball on the paddle. You could only move the ball along with the paddle, players could not use any other body part to try and get the ball to the goal. All players must also be in a cloth potato sack.

 

Players may hop, shuffle or slide around, as long as both feet remain in the potato sack. To begin the game, the 2 teams had to be divided by a line and 1 player from each team would join in the middle to do a face off. Once the instructor yells “GO!” the foam ball is on the ground and the 2 players would face off and try and get the foam ball to their teammates and into the opposing teams hula hoop. 

This game I think would be a good game for children in grades 5 - 6 because, it does require strong hand eye coordination and balance. A good modification for this game would be to limit how you can move the ball. Either players could balance or bounce or hit the ball not all 3 choices. By limiting the ways that players could move the ball to the goals, adds a certain degree of difficulty to the game.

 

 

With each of these games, the main goal that we aimed to achieve was team work and equal participation. These games aimed to include every person in the activites and that they all had the same amount of playing time. However, the skill that these 2 games aimed to work on was, hand eye coordination. With the amount of passing that needed to go on, in either a stationary or non stationary position, these games needed correct passing amongst teammates in order for the team to succeed.

I personally enjoyed working together in groups to try and figure out new games. It was great having everyones input on your ideas, or just adding in their own ideas to make up a game. My group worked very well together, listening to each other and trying out whatever others came up with as a group. The one thing I thought was challenging was the amount of time we had to acctually come up with a game. The one station that was the most challenging was the one that had all the bean bags and the giant rubber bands. With only 6 minutes to create a fun game that included everybody proved to be a fun and exciting challenge!

Teaching Philosophy

 

When it comes to teaching elementary school children games and activities, my teaching philosophy would be to make sure to include an emphasis on a fun atmosphere, the importance of safety, and respect for one another.

I believe that it is important to include fun as a teaching philosophy in a child’s physical education class because it is important that kids learn how to interact with one another in a joyous atmosphere. Children can learn that games and activities, like in a physical education class, can be a fun time that they can interact with friends and also make new friends in the process. I also think that it is important to make sure children are having fun because children need to have that positive experience of playing games and activities at an early age. That positive experience that children have progresses on to becoming a positive memory for them. We need children to have positive memories such as having fun playing games and activities in physical education as they progress through school, so that these children will continue to be active throughout their lives and not be intimidated to participate in such activities.

I also believe that is important to include the importance of safety when teaching children games and activities because it allows for children to become aware of safety for not only themselves but for others as well. Having safety as a philosophy while playing games and activities teaches children boundaries of what is safe and not safe behaviour. By allowing children to realize and learn what safe behaviour is in games and activities, allows for the children to incorporate safe behaviour outside of the games and activities and into their everyday lives.

The third philosophy that I believe to be important when teaching games and activities to children is respect. I believe that by having children participate in games and activities with one another allows for children to learn how to interact with one another through teamwork. Children may come to realize that they may not like everyone on their team for a game or activity, but will realize that they still need to include one another and work together with everyone in order to succeed. This teaches children that they need to be kind to one another and not exclude people from participating. Also, with having a strong philosophy of respect, I believe respect becomes especially important when the children are actually participating in the games and activities. Children will need to learn through many games to respect other children and especially their personal space. For children, learning respect can be as simple as listening to their peers, following directions from the teacher or even playing the game fairly. Children could learn to respect each other’s space by learning how to properly tag each other in freeze tag or by passing the ball to everyone on their team in basketball. By learning respect for other people through games and activities that they play, children will learn behaviour that should be demonstrated toward others.