The Good Old Parachute!

Today my partner and I went back to Newark Valley Middle School for our EDU 355 observation hours.  This week our host teacher let us run the class warm-ups so my partner and I stole a warm up right from our EDU 355 lab called Shadow Shake, Shadow Shake is a game that is similar to tagging except without the tagging.  The students pair and designate themselves one as the leader and one as the follower or “shadow”.  The leader runs or walks in any pattern and any direction they want in the gym but their follower or “shadow” has to keep up with them and when the music stops both students freeze and the shadow has to see if they kept up with
leader by putting their arm out and measuring the arm lengths away they are from their partner.  The students then switched roles and we changed the loco-motor patterns and used jumping, sliding, and skipping.  After the warm up our host teacher pulled out the parachute and the 5th grade students went nuts, they were so excited.  We played a variety games such as; mushroom, merry go round, shark attack, popcorn, and another game that made the students work together to make one ball go around the entire parachute by tilting the parachute up and down.
- Mushroom-   All the students have one color slice of the parachute and one the count of three the students throw the parachute up (still holding on) and step inside and sit with the edge of the parachute underneath them.  Once the students are under the parachute we switched colors, for example all the yellows found another yellow spot to go sit on.
- Merry go round-  Each student held on to the parachute with their right hand and ran, skipped, hopped, ect in a circle while making the parachute look like a merry go round                                                                                        
- Shark Attack- All the students put their feet under the parachute and one student will be underneath the parachute and when a student’s foot is grabbed they have to switch spots with the “Shark” or student who started out underneath.  Throughout the game there were more sharks designated and eventually the game ends when the teacher decides.
- Popcorn-  All students pull the parachute tight and with gator skin balls in the middle they wave the parachute up and down until the balls all fall off or the activity goes on for too long.
- Ball Tilt-  All students hold the chute similar to when holding it during the game of popcorn however now there is only one ball and the ball must roll around in front of each student without touching the middle of the parachute or falling off.
The students all in all had a great time without warm up and were extremely well behaved.  They really enjoyed the parachute games and could not get enough it.  Our host teacher said we did a great job at introducing ourselves and running the warm-up, also during most of the second class we were there I led most of the activities in a discrete manor I took leadership of the class.  I apologized after to the teacher because I was afraid I may have jumped in too early but she said it was fine and she believes that we learn better by doing so she was more than comfortable with me running the classroom.  Next week my partner and I are going to introduce some of our adventure activity games to the students and see if they enjoy them like they did the parachute.

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