Friday, April 14, 2017

The Best Parts of My Week - 4/3/17--4/7/17 (and a bit more!)

Hi everyone,
      I am a bit behind on posting this entry because I have been enjoying Spring Break!  I guess that is a pretty good reason for the delay.  It is my last official Spring Break since I am retiring at the end of this school year so it holds some special meaning for sure.  Fitness Frankie came with us on our trip and we had lots of fun snapping some photos for his blog…..more on that later!  So, on with the "Best Parts!"  


.....One of my students was very excited to show me a shirt he was wearing on Monday morning.  I saw him in the hallway and he said:  “I found two Fuel Up to Play 60 shirts at Goodwill!”. He wore one on Monday and one on Tuesday!


…..A 2nd grader asked me:  “When do we do Fuel Up to Play 60?” I was so glad that he was interested!  I explained that we are a Fuel Up to Play 60 school and that we do it all the time!  I think he was really asking about our Student Ambassador program so I explained that we start that in third grade.  I think he might just be in our next ambassador group!  


…...I had planned some Yoga lessons this week and I always love the reactions from my students when they see the Yoga mats set up in the gym.  A second grader said:  “I love Yoga!  It’s so calming!”  


…..A fifth grader walked into PE class this week with cool new sneakers.  He said:  “This is the first time I’m wearing my new sneakers for PE!” Remember when you got new sneakers as a child?  I remember the feeling and I always thought I could run faster in mone!  How about you?


…..Fitness Frankie to Go came back this week after having some wonderful and healthy adventures with one of my second grade friends.  He showed me the journal entry and it included a story and pictures about how they went to the Walkway Over the Hudson and ate healthy snacks.  He was proud of his efforts and I still get excited when I see that this project accomplishes the goal of continuing the message of the importance of healthy choices at home…….


…..At the end of our Yoga lessons for second grade students I asked them to write down one word that best described how doing Yoga makes them feel.  Their work will become part of their portfolio.  These were some of the words they wrote and shared with me:  relaxed, happy, calm, good, fantastic!  Fitness Frankie was doing Yoga with us as well and in another class I placed a slip of paper and pencil with him too.  I asked students to share what words Fitness Frankie might use to tell us how Yoga makes him feel.  Students were so cute when they saw that he was doing Yoga with us!  They concluded that he would say the following words: calm, relaxed, strong, confident……



…...A kindergarten class arrived to PE class and saw the Yoga mats set up for a second time. They all smiled and were excited to continue Yoga but one student shouted out:  “Namastep!”  :-)


…..We were following along with a Cosmic Kids Yoga story and one of the moves involved stretching forward while pretending to butter some bread.  One of the students looked at me and said:  “Who puts that much butter on a sandwich?”


…..Family Fitness Night was held on Thursday night and we had an amazing time! Of course, Fitness Frankie did too!  This year, in addition to parents and my amazing colleagues, we had some volunteers from our high school who are members of the National Honor Society and earn hours by doing community service.  They were fantastic and had so much fun playing with the students and families!  As I was running around during the evening making sure that everything was going smoothly I did take a step back to enjoy the sight of families exercising and playing together.  There were parents spotting their children while climbing our rock wall, families enjoying a trivia game about health and PE, families playing together and cheering on their children during four square and striker sheet games and so much more!  In fact, it was pretty hard to end the evening!  We gathered together and I thanked everyone involved and then our principal mentioned that this was my last Family Fitness Night.  While some of the parents know that I am retiring, I am just beginning to share the news with students.  One of the students thought that I was not coming back after Spring Break and kept returning to me for one more hug!  I finally realized what was happening and explained that we still had the rest of the year together.  That helped!  





…..As everyone started to leave Family Fitness Night the clean up began and it was fantastic to have so much help from all of our volunteers!  I got to the gym and all of our high school volunteers and a few families were engrossed in a Striker Sheet game!  They were having so much fun I hated to stop them.  The pure joy on the faces of everyone involved was beautiful to watch.  It was getting late however, and I still needed to get home and be a part of a Teacher Training Day on Friday so I got out my stopwatch and said:  “Ok, it’s time for a 2 minute championship round!”  The game ended and while everyone was sad to leave, they finished the clean up and were on their way.  I was exhausted but so pleased at the success of the night!  


…..The next day the students were off but staff was involved in a training day.  Our PE staff was looking forward to being together for the entire day as we participated in a professional development day by Aaron Hart of OPEN (Online Physical Education Network).  Our K-12 PE staff rarely has the opportunity to spend an entire day together and this day was a real gift.  I love the learning and curriculum opportunities provided by OPEN and I was excited that the rest of our staff would be learning about it was well.  We had so much fun!  Laughter and learning were the words of the day and I am so thankful to our staff for embracing the day and for Aaron of OPEN for providing a wonderful learning experience!  

…...As I was walking out to my car at lunch time I ran into one of the parents from my school.  He is a teacher at our high school and he brought his family to our Family Fitness Night the evening before.  He stopped to tell me what a great time he and his family at at our event.  He couldn’t say enough about how much fun they all had together and thanked me for organizing the evening.  Needless to say I was grateful for his kind words…….

…..As I said earlier, I have been on Spring Break this week and my husband and I have been enjoying a trip to Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC.  Fitness Frankie loves an adventure, as you know, and we often take him with us on our trips.  We went to the American History Museum at the Smithsonian and found an exhibit on the evolution of food.  It was right up our alley of course and there were some great photo opportunities!  What do you think?  More pictures of his adventure can be found soon on his picture blog at:  Fitness Frankie and Friends.


I hope you enjoyed the "Best Parts of My Week!" Visit my website: North Park Physical Education to find out more about our Physical Education program.