St Mary's Week one

This was the first lab that we began to teach actual games to the students at St. Mary's after school program.  I always knew that I was very good at communicating to children one on one, but trying to get a large amount of children to listen to you at once is a harder task than I imagined.  I figured that the students would love to learn new games and play them until they had no more energy, but at lab I realized it's much more complicated than that.  It's a challenge to get the children to listen to you, but once you realize how to get their attention, by showing how excited you are about the game you're trying to teach.  If we don't show that we are interested in the game, the students aren't going to want to learn it.  Once the game started the children were interested to see what was inside the buckets during "The endless bucket" game.  After they accomplished one or two cards, they became bored with the game.  One student Nicholas was quick to get bored and he had other students follow him to find a new task.  It seemed as though these boys were trying to show off.  They wanted individual attention on the things they were doing and creating themselves.  I think it's a great thing that they wanted to be creative, but with a gymnasium full of children and one teacher, it wont be safe in the future.  From now on I am going to focus on ways to get each and every student involved in the activities I am teaching.  I need to figure out how to make each game exciting and challenging enough for everyone.  While doing this I also need to make sure that each student is capable of the tasks I am challenging them with.  Im up for anything !