Lab 4: Dinosaur Train

In this weeks lab at St. Mary's the theme was Dinosaur Train which is a popular television show in the air right now on PBS. The skills that we were concentrating on this week were the overhand throw and catching a thrown ball, many of the students had some trouble doing both of these skills but there were a select few that were able to perform these skills well. Our class looked at two students a male and a female both who are in kindergarten and 6 years old, and assessed their overhand throw and catching skills. John the male student while throwing was establishing a downward arc of the throwing arm which initiated the windup but had trouble performing the other 3 tasks of the overhand throw. In assessing his catching skills it was clear that he had no trouble except for controlling the ball with his hands. The female student Alice performed every task in the throw except for the follow through diagonally across the body, but that can easily be fixed with a little coaching. Her catching skills were tremendous, she performed each task well and put them all together to catch the ball successfully and with correct fundamentals. My group was in charge of the Pre-K section for the afternoon, I had a great time working with these students. My job was to come up with a craft for the students to work on I printed off pictures of different types of dinosaurs and cut them out for the kids to color, I also got a poster board and wrote "Dinosaur Train St. Mary's" in colorful letters and they were able to tape their colorings on the board. Even though it was simple the children loved it and had a great time coloring in their dinosaurs!