The Best Parts of My Week....5/16/11-5/20/11

Hi everyone,

The weather outside was rainy and dreary, but inside we had a ball! I hope you enjoy the Best Parts of My Week!

.....Fitness Frankie spent the week in the cafeteria sitting in the lunch line. He was watching all of the choices that the students (and adults) were making! Apparently I am not the only one who believes in Fitness Frankie since I checked on him one day to see that he had been turned around so that he could not see someone choosing curly fries for lunch!

.....We continued Yoga this week with students in grades K-2 this week. I was happy to see the smiles on students faces as they entered the gymnasium to see the yoga mats set up and ready to go! One of my first grade students smiled and said "I'm wearing my yoga pants!"

.....I counted the "Coop" Cars that have been turned in as part of our Operation Healthy North Park program. We have collected 1,447 "Coop" cars so far!

.....One of my third grade classes came to PE for the first time since the expansion of our rock wall. One of the students exclaimed "THIS IS AWESOME!"

.....I had a meeting this week after school at our administration building. On my way out I noticed a window to an office that had many "Coop"cars taped to it! I knew that many in our administration building had committed to participating in the program, but it was amazing to see the cars taped up on the window ready to be sent to North Park!

.....I asked many students this week if they had seen Fitness Frankie in the lunch line. They all responded yes, but one student said "I gave him a hug"!

.....One of our building secretaries stopped by the gymnasium to give me some paperwork while a class was completing a portion of a fitness test. She was impressed by the hard work and concentration of our students! So was I!

I hope you enjoyed reading about "The Best Parts of My Week".

Please consider participating in "Operation Healthy North Park!"

Visit the North Park PE website to learn more about our program.

E-mail me with comments or questions at: northparkpe@yahoo.com

The Best Parts of My Week....5/9/11-5/13/11

Hi everyone,

It was a beautiful week! I was able to spend some time outside with my classes and we all enjoyed the sunshine! I hope you enjoy "The Best Parts of My Week"!

......One of my students stopped me in the hallway to tell me that they saw a real "Coop Car"! (A Mini-Cooper) This car is the theme car of Healthy Highway and we are using the cartoon character "Coop" as our Operation Healthy North Park exercise coupon. Students were so excited and I was excited to know that they are thinking on Operation Healthy North Park outside of school!

.....Last May we were fortunate to have a new rock wall installed in our gymnasium. This week we were even more fortunate as it was expanded this week to double the size! We are all very excited!

.....Due to the rock wall expansion in the gym this week, I held my classes outside while the work was being done. I decided to play a game that I call "Triangle Ball". It is a shortened version of whiffle ball and uses a tee and only three bases that make a triangle. Students play in small groups and take turns being the batter, pitcher, and fielder. I played this game with students from kindergarten through fifth grade and they all loved it! It was fun to watch them play!

.....Operation Healthy North Park is in full swing! I am grateful for the participation of so many in our school and community! This week I received "Coop Cars" from our Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent for Instruction, Assistant Superintendent for Pupil Personnel Services, as well as parents, students, siblings, teachers, and office staff from our school and administration!

.....I was excited to learn that our school may have the opportunity to create a "teaching garden" that will help students learn about growing healthy foods!

.....Toward the end of the week I planned yoga activities for my younger students. When they walked into the gymnasium many exclaimed "Yoga! Yesssssss!" At the end of the session, many others told me how much they had enjoyed yoga and that they were relaxed enough to sleep! I am always amazed by the power of Yoga for our students and feel grateful to have the equipment that allows me to provide the opportunity for them to experience it!

.....Fitness Frankie played golf (well sort of) with our principal and myself after school on Friday! We had a great time taking him along. He enjoyed it too! (I could tell by the smile on his face!) Visit his blog to read about his adventures! The Adventures of Fitness Frankie!

.....My week was extended a bit for wonderful reason. On Saturday I was proud to be a part of the Elementary/Middle School PE Awards sponsored by the Southeastern Zone of the New York State Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance (NYS AHPERD). I have volunteered at this event for a few years and in the recent past have been able to nominate some of my students for the award. 460 students were honored at this ceremony and I was proud to have students from North Park receiving the award as well! Families and students alike were proud of their accomplishment!

I hope you enjoyed reading about "The Best Parts of My Week".

Please consider participating in "Operation Healthy North Park!"

Visit the North Park PE website to learn more about our program.

E-mail me with comments or questions at: northparkpe@yahoo.com

The Best Parts of My Week....5/2/11-5/6/11

Hi everyone,

This past week was Teacher Appreciation Week and National Physical Education and Sport Week! It was a wonderful week and I definitely felt appreciated!

.....While finishing up some dance activities one of my students doing the Paper Dance decided to do the "Tango" with her paper partner!

.....I was so proud of one of my students as he read Fitness Frankie's journal entry to the entire school!

.....Fitness Frankie has a great weekend with one of our teachers who took the time to make a book of his weekend adventure and included National Physical Education and Sport Week on the cover!

.....We started fitness testing this week. I was impressed with how hard my students worked and how they showed respect to their classmates with encouragement and kind words!

.....Operation Healthy North Park began this week as well! Many of our teachers, students, and families participate. One teacher showed me his very own pedometer!

.....Our wonderful PTA, students, and families showed their appreciation this week in so many wonderful ways........

.....We are getting ready for Field Day by selling Field Day T-shirts. An family donation came in to purchase a shirt for some other student in need.....

.....After school one day I was greeted by a little one who will be a kindergarten student next Fall. His dad was a former student of mine!

.....I am so lucky to work with wonderful people! Some of my colleagues offered to help with Operation Healthy North Park. I accepted and am very grateful for their offer!

.....Our office staff never cease to amaze me with their creativity and thoughtfulness! This week they turned in their "Coop" car for participation in Operation Healthy North Park and made one car so that the car door opened to find Fitness Frankie and another to find Exercise Ernie!

.....We were treated to a wonderful luncheon on Friday for Teacher Appreciation Week by our PTA. As I was leaving the luncheon a parent stopped to tell me that I was her PE teacher years ago! We had a terrific conversation and it brought me back in time!

.....All week we celebrated National Physical Education and Sport Week! We capped off the week with Project ACES! Our entire school spent time outside exercising as a team! We exercised, laughed, and appreciated the opportunities that we have in Physical Education!

I hope you enjoyed reading about "The Best Parts of My Week".

Please consider participating in "Operation Healthy North Park!"

Visit the North Park PE website to learn more about our program.

E-mail me with comments or questions at: northparkpe@yahoo.com

The Best Parts of My Week....4/25/11-4/29/11

Hi everyone,

Last week we enjoyed Spring Recess and students and teachers came back to school energized for the rest of the year! I hope you enjoy the "Best Parts of My Week"!

.....Well, the ladies in the office at my school have outdone themselves again! Honestly, they are wonderful and so involved with our students and our programs! They volunteered to take care of Fitness Frankie during Spring Recess and made another awesome book with pictures and a story about his adventures with them! We are so fortunate to have them both in our building! Check out the story and some pictures by visiting Fitness Frankie's Blog!

.....During the day on Monday, I frequently asked my students about their Spring Recess. I wanted to know if they had been active and if they enjoyed their time off from school. I had some great conversations. At the end of the day, while I was on bus duty in the hallway, one of my fourth grade students was kind enough to ask me about my vacation!

.....I was on bus duty in the hallway on Monday afternoon when our health teacher came to tell me that when she discussed nutrition with some of our classes and told them that a tomato was a vegetable, many corrected her by saying "Mrs. R. said that it is a fruit!" We then had a great discussion about how the controversy over whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable. She was impressed that the food pyramid and nutrition was covered in PE class! I was impressed that my students remembered! I guess they were paying attention!

.....While introducing a Dance unit in my primary grades, I told the students that dancing is terrific exercise and I was going to prove it to them by using my pedometer to show them how many steps we took during each dance. My older students use pedometers regularly, but students in the younger grades have not yet used them during PE class. It was fun to show them the step counts at the end of each dance. They were excited to know how many steps we took for each dance and agreed that dancing is great exercise!

.....As I have said, my primary students have been enjoying some dancing recently. I learned a dance from a colleague many years ago called "The Paper Dance". Each student has a piece of paper on the floor in front of them (I use scrap paper and recycle it), and they follow me as I do basic dance steps on, off, and with the paper. One of the steps is called the "Cool Walk". I tell my students that they are the coolest students in the world and I want them to show me by doing the "Cool Walk" around their piece of paper on the floor. We practice and then during the music we all do it when I say "Do the Cool Walk"! I always smile and enjoy this dance because the "Cool Walks" that the students come up with are fantastic! They are totally cool!

.....One of my fourth grade classes was going to miss PE class one day this week because of a visitor to their classroom. This guest is an expert on Colonial America and comes each year to teach our students in a unique and engaging way. I went down to the class to watch his presentation during their scheduled PE time. He was terrific! The students were very excited and involved in the lesson. The timing was perfect because he was just about to teach the students about games that were played by children in Colonial America! I learned all about the games from that era. One of the games was a wooden version of something we use in PE today called a "Catch-A-Cup"! The Colonial game was much harder!

.....I am always looking to try new things and I saw a game in a new book that bought recently (PE 2 the Max by J.D. Hughes) called "Scooter Blitz". Sometimes games look good on paper, but need to be modified for your own space and students so I decided to try it out with one of my 5th grade classes. I told them that they were going to be my "test class", since I had not played the game before and I wanted to see how it worked. They were terrific! The game was great and they all seemed to enjoy it! At the end of class I asked them for feedback about what they liked about the game and ideas they had for variations. They came up with wonderful suggestions and seemed proud to be the "test class"! I was proud of them too!

.....I can't believe that April has ended and today is May 1st! During May we participate in a project that I call "Operation Healthy North Park". This is our 10th year of the program! It is a program that encourages students, staff, family members, and community members to exercise outside of the school day as part of National Physical Education and Sport Week which we extend to to the entire month of May. I had a great time getting ready for this project this past week. I put up a bulletin board that displays the project and enjoyed the interest that it generated! This year I have modified the program to include our Healthy Highway theme! Visit the North Park PE Website to see a picture of last year's project and to view information about the project. Everyone is invited to participate! If you would like to get involved, download the letter and "Coop" cars and e-mail me your activities!

.....We held our most recent Healthy Highway assembly this past Friday morning. We will be driving on "Success Circle" this month. It was a great assembly! We celebrated our many different student successes and talked about what success means from the viewpoints of character education, physical education and fitness, and nutrition. We had a great time!

.....Friday was an early release day due to parent/teacher conferences. I had a visit from a former student who is now in different elementary school. It was a great visit! It is so heartwarming to know that you have made a connection that continues even after students are no longer in your school..........

I hope you enjoyed reading about "The Best Parts of My Week".

Please consider participating in "Operation Healthy North Park!"

Visit the North Park PE website to learn more about our program.

E-mail me with comments or questions at: northparkpe@yahoo.com

The Best Parts of My Week....4/11/11-4/15/11

Hi Everyone,

It was a fun-filled week as we looked forward to our Spring Break! I hope you enjoy the "Best Parts of My Week"!

.....I was fortunate to be able to obtain a grade-level grant from our PTA to bring in a local Yoga instructor this week. "Miss Kathleen" arrived on Monday to teach some Yoga activities to many of our primary classes. She introduced the students to "Mr. Zoobles" and "Mr. Twisty" who helped us all with our breathing and our Yoga poses. After the first group, Miss Kathleen asked where Fitness Frankie was! I did not know that Miss Kathleen even knew about Fitness Frankie but she had seen him on our website! I immediately went down to the class that was taking care of him this week and borrowed him! He took part in Yoga with all of us! You can see the pictures of our Yoga experience by visiting the North Park PE website.

.....Fitness Frankie has a new sleeping bag! One of the student in his "host" class made him a colorful paper sleeping bag to rest in during his nights at North Park! It was so thoughtful and he looked very comfortable in it!

.....My upper grade classes have been enjoying some basketball activities this past week. I always encourage my students to cheer for their teammates, but also for their classmates who may not be on their team for a particular PE activity. I was thrilled this week to hear all kinds of cheering for teammates and classmates during a variety of basketball activities!

.....As a follow-up to a Skype session that I did with some of my students and students in another district school recently, I asked my third graders to each write down a question that they wanted to ask during our next Skype session with the same class. I was impressed with the questions! One of my students wants to know if the goals for their PE classes are the same as ours! Now that's a great question!

.....On Friday I was encouraging my students to enjoy Spring vacation by going out to play and exercising during our week off. I told them that Fitness Frankie was going to enjoy his week at school with our office staff who offered to take care of him. One student raised her hand and said "How come Fitness Frankie doesn't get a vacation?"

.....Our school has a drama club run by our very talented Speech Therapist. This year's production was Charlotte's Web. There is a tremendous amount of work that goes into the production by students, parents, and staff and I am always in awe of the final product! I attended the opening performance of the play this week and the performance did not disappoint! Fitness Frankie attended as well and the students were happy to see him!

.....Our office staff are wonderful ladies who work very hard to keep our school running smoothly. They generously offered to take care of Fitness Frankie during our vacation as they are still working in the office. They were so excited when I delivered him on Friday afternoon! I can't wait to hear about their week!

I hope you enjoyed reading about "The Best Parts of My Week".

Visit the North Park PE website to learn more about our program.

E-mail me with comments or questions at: northparkpe@yahoo.com

The Best Parts of My Week....4/4-4/8

Hi everyone,

Spring has finally arrived! (well, sort of anyway....) We had a great week here at North Park! Hope you enjoy the "Best Parts of My Week!"

.....Fitness Frankie spent the week in a 5th grade class. They were so excited when I delivered him on Monday!

.....At the end of a kindergarten class, a student noticed that I was wearing my jacket with one sleeve rolled up and the other down. She commented on it and I said that I guess I just didn't notice it. When she left PE class she had rolled one pant leg up and the other was down! I think she was trying to be like me! I was flattered!

.....As one of my second grade classes arrived for PE class this week they brought a present. They worked very hard to write about Jump Rope for Heart and created a book of their work with the cover illustrated by one of the students! I was so touched! They were so excited to give it to me and I was more than excited to receive it! I read the stories that night, which included pictures of Jump Rope for Heart. They were terrific and one of the things that I was impressed with was that the students expressed clearly why Jump Rope for Heart is so important!

.....Just like all teachers, from time to time I need to be out of school and need a substitute. I was fortunate this week to have a former student with a college degree in Physical Education sub for me! He did a great job!

.....A colleague of mine and I are doing a project this year to learn about and find a use for Skype technology. Skype uses video technology to allow real time conversations using a computer and web cam. This week we used Skype with our third grade classes. My colleague and I teach in different schools in the same district. We each have rock walls, but there are some differences and similarities in how we use them. We decided to conduct a Skype session with one of our third grade classes using our respective rock walls, and follow-up with a question and answer session with the students. It was amazing! Each group showed the other how the rock wall is used. Our students were terrific and impressed with the technology! I can't wait for the follow-up session so that I can hear the questions and answers!

.....We ended the week with our annual Student/Teacher Jump Show. This show began six years ago as a celebration of our hard work to make our first Jump Rope for Heart a success. It began with a commitment from our principal and myself to jump rope for students. Well, one thing led to another and many other adults in our building volunteered to jump for the students too! As the years went by we expanded the show to showcase the skills that students learned to get ready for Jump Rope for Heart. Not only do we have students in grades K-5 jump in a variety of ways, but also many adults in our school embrace this show and participate to jump for the students! This year was a wonderful success! We raised more than $2500.00 for the American Heart Association during our Jump Rope for Heart event and for the past six years of the JRFH events we have raised more than $21,000.00! The tremendous generosity of our school community is one of the many reasons we celebrate with our Jump Show! We all agree that our jump rope skills have improved! Our future goal is to someday master the Double-Dutch Jump Rope!

I hope you enjoyed reading about "The Best Parts of My Week".

Visit the North Park PE website to learn more about our program.

E-mail me with comments or questions at: northparkpe@yahoo.com

The Best Parts of My Week....3/28-4/1

Hi everyone,

The year seems to be flying by! It's usually around this time of year that I realize how much the students have grown and that another year is going faster than the last! I hope you enjoy the "Best Parts of My Week"!

.....I delivered Fitness Frankie to his "host" class. They were so excited (including the classroom teacher) that they asked me if I could hear them cheer from the office when their class was announced!

.....My primary students were participating in a Healthy Highway Race Car Warm-up. One of the students came up with a great idea! She suggested using arms as blinkers so that other students would know when students were entering and exiting the track! Why didn't I think of that????

.....My fifth grade students were playing a game called "Nutrition Concentration". I play a song during the game called "Superpower Vegetables" by Jump with Jill. I was asking the students about strategies that they used to find matches or pairs of vegetable cards. One of the fifth graders said that when he sang along with the song and said "Superpower Vegetables", he always found a match! He said that saying those words gave him "super powers"!

.....I had taken a picture of Fitness Frankie in his new spring hat (there is a picture on his blog). I was showing the picture to some of the students this week and as soon as they saw his picture they smiled and said "Awwwwwww, he's so cute!"

.....My fourth graders were allowed to take home our "PE Packs to Go!" this week. It was their first time using the packs which have a pedometer and log card to use at home. I challenge each group sharing a pack to get as many steps as possible and I announce those packs with more than 10,0000 steps. They were so excited to take the packs home!

.....Recently, I had the opportunity to contribute to an article that Wendy Cooper, founder of Healthy Highway, was writing for PE Links 4U Website. I was asked to write a portion of the article about how our school had implemented Healthy Highway. I was grateful for the opportunity and this week it was published! If you would like to view the article, visit the PE Links 4U Website and click on the Healthy Highway article!

I hope you enjoyed reading about "The Best Parts of My Week".

Visit the North Park PE website to learn more about our program.

E-mail me with comments or questions at: northparkpe@yahoo.com