St. Mary's Day 2

Before going to lab we were told to come prepared with some tag game ideas. I had a ton of ideas ready to use but it all changed once there. I didn't end up using any of the tag games I had ready, but overall the day went well. Once again I started in the cafeteria with the same group of kids I had last time but instead of puzzle and Mancala, we played battleships. I was on a team with one of the 3rd grade boys and on the other team were two girls. The game was going well but one of the girls was not playing fairly. I didn't exactly know how to handle to situation. When I confronted the girl about cheating and stressed the idea that we all have to play fairly she was basically yelling back at me. I felt in an awkward position because I'm not the girl's teacher and wasn't quite sure how much authority I had but at the same time the boy who I was playing with was getting very upset and frustrated with how she was cheating. Eventually I got it under control and convinced the girl that what she was doing was unfair which also allowed the boy I was playing with to forget the bad encounter. After games in the cafeteria we moved upstairs to the gym again. In the gym we got to use some of our tag games. Each of my group members and I took turns introducing the tag games we could play. One of the first games we played was blog tag with worked out pretty well except the children had a little trouble deciding with direction to go in to strategize. The second tag game we played was Octopus tag where once you were tagged you had to stay still but could tag other players that were still in the game so that they would become an octopus as well. Another tag game we introduced was turtle tag where once a player was tagged they had to go onto their backs and could only re-enter the game if another member of their team tapped both their feet and hands. The game I introduced was not one of the ones I had planned but was a game the kids requested. It was Red Rover. In this game there was one person who was it in the middle of the gym and would call people to attempt to reach the other side by saying, "Red Rover Red Rover if you are wearing ___(a certain color)___ come over." This would determine who had to race to the other side of the gym based on what color clothes they were wearing. If you were caught you became one of the taggers. The game finally ended when there was only one person left un-tagged. It's a fun tag game and all the kids seemed to like it. After introducing our tag games the kids were given free time. During free time my group and I did a lot of jump rope with the kids. They really seemed to enjoy that. Once jump rope seemed to be getting boring I introduced and game Mississippi River where you take two jump ropes and start they close together and have the kids try to leap over the "river" made of the jump ropes. The more the kids kept jumping over the ropes the larger the space between the ropes would get. For the day something interesting that I witnessed would be the imagination some of the kids have. They are very good a pretending and when you pretend the more interested they are in the activity. I saw this especially with the Mississippi River game because it was like they really considered it a river and did not want to fall in. Using their imaginations makes them much more interested in the games I find. Once again it was another successful day at St. Mary's.