Tee-ball with the boys

Every week for PE and Sport, Lalor (who teaches Year 4) and I combine classes and separate them, depending on what we're doing, into groups for different activities.

Today we started with rotating 'Core Fitness' stations. 19 different activities that focused on developing different muscles or fitness. Things like mini hurdles, push-up slaps, spider-holds and lunge jumps. I'm pretty sure I would have been one of the kids who needed to tie their shoelaces or desperately needed the bathroom at particular groups... While there was a bunch of these kids, it was actually a small minority out of the 52 kids. Some of my kids even made up songs and chants for different stations. At one point I walked past the spider-holders (like holding a push up, but with your legs and arms spread out really wide) and they were all saying "we can do this, we can do this, we can do this!" over and over. So cute!

After fitness we split into gender groups. We find that this works pretty well in sport as they seem to approach it completely differently...girls (in general) love the social aspect whereas the boys (in general) tend to be all about the competition. For the past two weeks I have had tee-ball with the girls and it has been hilarious. Today, however, it was my turn with the boys. I was a bit nervous, because the Year 4 boys love dishing out attitude. But I shouldn't have been worried! The boys were amazing! Probably even easier than the girls. They were so engaged in the game and behaved so well so they wouldn't miss out on a minute of it.

The thing I admired the most, though, was the way they looked out for each other and encouraged each other. I have 2 boys who are not super athletic. One has cerebral palsy and the other has an intellectual delay amongst other motor skill issues. The way the rest of the boys made allowances for these two and encouraged them was heart-warming. Even the boys from the 'opposition' were giving tips and helping them to have success in the game. My favourite moment was when I realised that left-handed T was batting right-handed (because that's what everyone else was doing) with limited success... once I realised this I turned him around, helped him to swap his hands over and he swung and hit a home run! So good!

I am so looking forward to tee-balling with the boys again next week!
But tomorrow I'm off to Sydney to cheer on 5 kids who made it to the State level in athletics! One girl in my class came first in 100m, 200m, 400m and long jump at the Zone carnival! (and she has never trained in any of these events...though she is a medal winning gymnast) I'm looking forward to watching her compete against the best in the state tomorrow!