EDU Lab 2

One of my EDU 355 labs we are learning elementary games that are pretty fun and creative.  A few of the games we learned were Fire Chief, clear over the river, toothbrush tag, and swat the flag.   All of these games can be used to measure locomotor skills or practice locomotor skills. 

Fire chief is a good game that is set up with the same amount of groups as hula hoops.  From there the hula hoops are placed on one side of the gym and the groups form lines on the other end.  The students objective is to run down to the other end and run around the hula hoop to put out the fire by waving their hands over the hula hoops and then they run back down to their group.  The run can be subisituted in for any locomotor skill such as running, walking, hopping, jumping, galloping, skipping, sliding, or anything else someone can think of. 

Clear over the river was a fun game that can be use to practice or assess throwing skills.  The ideal game has a rope from one side of the area to the next and one team on each side.  There will be multiple items and objects on the floor that the students can pick up and throw over the rope to the other side.  Now if the students are successful at this and do not use proper technique to throw the objects, setting up two ropes and having a space in between them called a “river” where students must throw or try to throw over it to the other side, when they are doing this remember to emphasize the techniques to throwing properly. 

Toothbrush tag would be a good game for a warm up in my opinion.  There was a tooth paste tube that was actually just a pillow with duct tape around on end that made the pillow look like a tube of tooth paste.  This was the side of the gym with the students who had the noodles or tooth brushes.  The other students were the germs or the not it students and had to run towards the tooth brushes until the teacher yells “the germs are coming!  The germs are coming!” and then the tooth brushes are allowed to chase the germs and try to tag them until the germs enter their safe zone. 

The last game we played was Swat the fly, this was a fun game that allowed students to chase each other with a different person than to simply tag the other person.  Some students would have a long rope that had a paper plate with a fly or drum picture on it and other students will have noodles and will run around and try to hit the fly or drum that is being dragged around.