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Get Ready…Get Set…Get Fit!
Mrs. Amy Monroe
I can’t believe it’s almost that time of year again! It’s time for the Physical Fitness test! What is it and why do students take it? This test helps children lead active and healthy lives, and it recognizes them for their level of physical fitness in five different activities. How? Each child in 1st-5th grade is tested on five activities: 1) curl-ups (a.k.a. sit-ups), 2) pull-ups or flexed-arm hang or push-ups, 3) shuttle run, 4) V-sit reach, and 5) the endurance run/walk. These activities measure different fitness components: 1) muscular endurance, 2) muscular strength, 3) speed and agility, 4) flexibility, and 5) cardio-respiratory endurance. If they reach a particular standard (these depend on age and gender), they qualify for the National or the Presidential (highest) Award.
 
I teach these five main components (along with many others) during the course of the year to all grades, including Kindergarten. From sports-related activities like basketball or soccer to playing a game (their favorite “Sharks and Minnows”), they are learning these five important components, even if they think they are just playing a fun game! The children enjoy taking these tests, and they are motivated to do their very best!
Kindergarten is Hands On!
Mrs. Kelly Erickson
In Kindergarten, we enjoy participating in hands-on activities to help us learn new concepts. For instance, in science we learned about the scientific method, and the three forms of matter, solid, liquid, and gas. We observed how ice is a solid, and described it using our five senses. We then observed how water is a liquid, and watched as the water was poured into different containers. With this new knowledge we were ready to conduct our first experiment. We asked whether ice or water would weigh more. We each made our hypotheses and then we tested it. When the results showed that ice weighed less, we observed the many bubbles frozen in the ice. Wonderful things happened after this experiment. More questions arose and in turn more experiments were conducted. We melted the ice back into a liquid and then froze it into a different shapes, solids. We played with snow and to finish our lesson we changed a liquid into a solid with an icee maker. Hands-on activities have really helped us learn the concepts of the scientific method and the three forms of matter.
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