The Best Parts of My Week - 5/18/15--5/22/15

Hi everyone,
     Even though it feels like summer, and some of my friends across the country are already on summer vacation, here in the Northeast we still have another 5 weeks of school!   I guess that means there are many more opportunities for "The Best Parts of My Week!"

.....The week began with the task of counting our "Coop Car" total for our Operation Healthy North Park project.  I count the cars halfway through the project to encourage students and families to continue to exercise and participate in the project.  I have improved my counting system over the years ("work smarter - not harder") but I do actually count each and every car.  Our halfway total is 2,176 "Coop Cars"!  That's impressive!  Another impressive fact is that one class turned in 378 "Coop Cars" all by themselves!

.....As we continue traveling down our Healthy Highway road of Kindness Way more and more students are sharing their random acts of kindness.  This week some first grade students came down to the gym specifically to tell me that they had done five a random acts of kindness that day alone!  They are certainly traveling down Kindness Way!

.....Our Fuel Up to Play 60 Student Ambassadors were hard at work this week conducting a vegetable taste test!  We have been organizing and planning this project for a few months and students were excited when the day arrived to actually taste the vegetables.  Ambassadors organized three kinds of vegetables into bags for student tasting; pea pods, turnip, and leaf lettuce.  In addition, students had created a survey for students to indicate whether they liked a particular vegetable, disliked it, or were not sure.  Survey results were transferred to a parent letter encouraging families to try these vegetables at home and finally, students collected the data.  It was quite a project and I was so proud of how our ambassadors conducted themselves!

.....After the students had a chance to try the vegetables from our taste test this week, one of the classroom guinea pigs got into the act too!  "Truffle" the guinea pig tried each of the vegetables and liked leaf lettuce the best!

.....In addition to our vegetable taste test, our Fuel Up to Play 60 Student Ambassadors had a chance to submit a video for a Milk Challenge contest this week.  We had a great time filming the segments and students were excited to be a part of it!  I will let you know how it turns out!

.....One of my students has been medically excused from PE for awhile and this student has been quite a trooper but it has been hard not participating in Gymnastics especially.  This week the student was cleared for PE and arrived at the gym doors to say:  "I can PLAY!"  We both smiled at the news!

.....Another student had a birthday this week and it happen to fall on a PE day.  When I saw her early in the day she said:  "I'm so glad I have PE on my birthday!"  More smiles for both of us!

.....Once in awhile I have some time to greet students as they enter the building in the morning.  I enjoy saying good morning and seeing the excited faces of students as the arrive to school.  One morning this week I was doing just that and a student handed me a drawing that she did that was all about healthy choices!

.....I love it when students share their healthy food choices with me.  Sometimes they are walking down the hall on the way to or from lunch and show me carrots, apples, or other healthy foods and other times I am in the classroom and students share what they have brought in for snack that day.  This week I was in a classroom talking to the teacher about a project when a student came up to me to show me the fruit salad that she was going to eat for snack that day!  She was so proud of her healthy choice and knew I would be too!

.....During our Gymnastics unit I stretch with students at the end of our class.  I use a technique I call "Share Count Stretching".  Basically, I count one and the students count two, and so on.  I love to do the stretching this way because I think it slows down the stretch so that it is more effective, and students seem to enjoy it, especially when I throw in a few twists and turns!  For example, this week I started counting in Spanish and students followed right along!  Next, I taught them how to count to ten in French, and some students offered to teach the rest of us how to count in other languages as well.  I can't wait until this week to see what languages we are going to learn!

I hope you enjoyed the "Best Parts of My Week"!  To find out more about the PE program at North Park, visit my website:  North Park Physical Education.