"I Gotta Go, I Have a Hair Appointment!"

This past lab was the last one for the year. My time spent at St. Mary's was great and I really enjoyed working with the kids.

We themed this lab around superhero, and everyone in the class dressed up as a superhero. Superman was the most popular costume, and I myself wore a Superman shirt. Kelly was dressed up as Flash, Dave made his own Batman costume, and Brendan also wore a Superman shirt. To start of, I wanted the kids to burn off some energy so we started with a quick game of Superhero tag. This is a variation of freeze tag, and when you get tagged, you have to pose as either the superhero of your choice, or whatever superhero I choose. We started off with doing our best Superman poses, and then added our best Spiderman poses as well. This got the kids a little tired so that they were easier to handle, and they got to just run around for a while.

Next came the parachute. We layed the parachute out, and they kids instantly went crazy. First, I explained all of the rules of the parachute, such as not run on or under the parachute without permission and listening at all times. After the rules were in place, I had the kids spread out around the parachute, and when everyone was holding on tight, I let them just go as crazy as they could and make as many wave as possible. I feel like this worked perfectly because I could tell they just wanted to whip the parachute around as much as they could so I let them get it out of their system before we went into the actual games. I had the kids practice making waves under control at waste height, low to the floor, and high by their shoulders and heads. Then we played some Popcorn which went really well, we played Sharkfin, and we also played Air Conditioner, along with some other games as well. The kids absolutely loved the parachute, and it was a great work out for them. They had to use their whole body to make waves, and everyone was exhausted, including me, by the end of our time playing with the parachute. After we tuckered the kids out with the parachute we followed them downstairs to the cafeteria and played with legos. All the boys love to play legos and it is a lot of fun to build ships and houses with them. They love to build ships and pretend they are from Star Wars, and I'm pretty sure they make up characters.

All of the groups looked really good, and we had a great last lab. I am really thankful to St. Mary's for allowing us to work with their students, and I think that this experience is really good for allowing me to learn how to begin to teach kids and how to communicate with them better. The kids really loved having us there, and I think that our labs were a huge success. The kids are a lot of fun, and the things they say sometimes is pretty funny. The title of this blog, "I Gotta Go, I Have a Hair Appointment", is a quote from one of the girls. She was in the middle of trying to say goodbye to one of the boys, and he really wanted to talk to her. She got really impatient, so she finally just stormed out and yelled, "I got to go, I have a hair appointment". My group and I found this to be pretty funny, and it was a great cap to the end of our time at St. Mary's.