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Name of Activity:

Animal Actions

Purpose of Activity:

To help students practice and master various locomotor or traveling patterns.

Prerequisites:

How to take turns and if necessary momentarily wait a turn. How to belly crawl, dog crawl and jump, either two-foot to two-foot pattern or a leap, one foot to opposite foot pattern.

Suggested Grade Level:

PRE-K

Materials Needed:

8 Mini 6" cones 8 Medium cones 10-12" 8 larger cones 12-18" 12 pool noodles 24 noodle connectors 4 XL 24" cones

Description of Idea

With the various sized cones, noodles and noodle connectors, set-up 6 to 8 obstacle type centers. Each center might have 3-4 different obstacle activities. Use an XL cone to designate the start of a center so that the students know where to begin each center and have the students practice moving carefully to each center. Teach your students to move to whatever center has the fewest kids and to keep moving to all the centers. Keep in mind, you will need to continue to work on this concept and guide them along if one particular center seems to get a lot of students. Or, teacher may always assign students a center to start with.

At each center, set-up the challenges: 1) use mini cones and noodle to create a small (6" height or less) hurdles to jump or step over; 2) use medium sized cones and noodle to create a medium sized obstacle for the child to belly crawl under; 3) use larger cones and noodle to create and arch shape for the child to "dog" crawl under. At each center, create a new pattern with the cones/noodles to challenge the child's memory and motor patterns. For example, at Center 1 the pattern might be jump (horse jump), crawl (dog crawl) and slither (belly crawl). At center 2, the pattern might be slither like a snake, jump like horse, crawl like a dog. At center 3, the pattern might be crawl like a dog, slither like a snake and jump like horse. Use the animal imagery to help students with the proper motor action.

Assessment Ideas:

As the student is getting ready for a center, ask them what he/she does at each obstacle?

Can students perform each activity and remain on balance and in control of their bodies.

Submitted by Teri Charpenel who teaches at Fulton Elementary in Frankfort, IL. Thanks for contributing to PE Central! Posted on PEC: 3/4/2010.
Viewed 134905 times since 9/20/2009.

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Animal Actions

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Previous Comments:

Kaitlin

I just did this with my little girls at home, and it was a lot of fun. I don't have gym equipment like the cones or pool noodles, so I improvised with chairs, cups, stacks of DVDs, etc. Great idea! I love this site.



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