Physical Labor Day

This week we were inundated with back-to-school activities – picnics, ice cream socials, drop-in days, etc. Watching my girls play at the picnics it became glaringly obvious that we live in a very girly world. My kids don’t even have bats and gloves and when we play with balls it tends to be to line them up in a row and make a wall for our castle. I do exercise with the kids pretty much daily but we tend to run or bike, and right now Abby is in gymnastics and Bree takes ballet (and swimming at school). My husband sees sports knowledge as his domain so he decided that on Labor Day weekend he wanted to have some Daddy time to teach the girls some sports.

In addition to learning sports so the kids can make Daddy look good at the picnics, sports are important for the physical, mental, and psychological development of toddlers. Physically, learning sports will help improve their reflexes, keep them fit, help develop their bones and muscles. Mentally, the concentration required by sports will help increase the kids’ attention span and give them a sense of accomplishment. Psychologically, physical activity reduces anxiety in toddlers. All of these benefits can be achieved even if the kids aren’t yet playing competitive sports.

The core gross motor skills that my husband and I thought the kids should learn to play sports with balls are:

o Throwing forward to a specific target with multiple types of balls

o Kicking forward to a specific target

o Shooting a ball with 2 hands

My husband taught the girls how to shoot the basketball

by dunking…

and shooting from further away…

He also worked with them on throwing a football. It took a while for them to get the hang of it, but they did.

Both girls liked to get the football and run, so we had lots of chases and a little touch football game going. However, we quickly learned that stripping the ball was a serious offensive and threatened to end the game (aka caused a tantrum of epic proportions).

We also played soccer, working on dribbling, passing, and shooting.

There is nothing like spending a long weekend in the fresh air.

<3 Pedigreed Housewife

Comments

Gripping Geometry

Both of my kids know their basic shapes (square, triangle, circle) very well. Briana even knows all of the basic extended shapes (pentagon, octagon, star, oval, rectangle, heart, and diamond). Abigail gets the extended shapes correct some of the time but not always yet. I credit the kids’ love of puzzles, specifically the Melissa and Doug puzzle that shouts out each shape’s name in a weird monotone if you put it in the correct space. At this point I think that there is a diminishing return in adding dodecahedron to their vocabulary or splitting the triangle into isosceles and equilateral and the rectangle into a parallelogram and a trapezoid. That being said I do want to expand on their knowledge of shapes (and spending the day on shapes will reinforce what they already know too). So this week I will literally expand the shapes for the kids- Squares into cubes Rectangles into boxes or cuboids Circles into cylinders and spheres Triangles into ...

It's Just A Phase

One of the coolest things in life, no matter how old you are, is watching a magic trick and being completely stupefied as to how it works. One of the most indulgent things in life, no matter how old you are, is chocolate. Today I’m combining the two, and using chocolate to demonstrate nature’s great magic trick – phase changes – solids to liquids to gases. Usually I prep the kids with the ideas we’ll explore the next day before bedtime. I think that the terminology sinks in a little and the kids have time to start to question things so that we have a more fruitful discussion and experiment the next day. Last night I was telling Briana before bed that tomorrow we’d be making chocolate lollipops just like her friend Mitchell did for his 3 rd birthday party favors and we’d be looking for how the chocolate can change, based on how hot we make it, from a solid piece of chocolate, to a liquid like hot chocolate, to a gas. Briana looks up at me an...

Helping Hands Olympics

As the school year starts to come to a close, and we prepare for next year, I’ve been going to many preparatory meetings at the kids’ school about next year. Of all of the information I was inundated with, one alarming fact, which was actually said offhand in response to a question, stuck out. Many kids nowadays don’t have the coordination and hand strength to tie their shoes or even to write. Apparently when we substitute things like climbing trees for video games and written letters for emails, our kids are losing the muscles in their hands. It was said that most kids by what I think was 3 rd grade don’t have the muscles in their hands to write a multiple page paper at one sitting. It was also said that most Kindergarteners not only can’t tie their shoes, but have never even been presented with the opportunity to try to tie their shoes in today’s world of slip-ons and Velcro. That’s really alarming (and sociologically interesting) to me! ...

Pedigreed Housewife World

Search This Blog