BEST lab ever!

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Our final Lab

My last day at Saint Mary's after school program was by far the most memorable. It went far beyond learning a great teaching lesson, or simply having fun playing games. It showed me that sometimes a little extra goes a long way, and that's applicable to everything that I do. My partner in class (Mitch) told me that he had a Mario costume, from that point I decided to change my costume to Luigi. To my surprise it was a big hit with the children.
Our assignment on the day was to interview every student in our lab group, and report how they took to their own lab experiences. The costumes went over so well with the children that Mitch and I could not even get to half the students in our class. At one point we walked out to the play ground in an attempt to get a student from our PED 201 class aside for an interview. We honestly where instantly swarmed with children. At first I tried running away so they'd follow me and Mitch could possibly get the interview, but to no avail. Even though they followed me for a moment they quickly caught me, and Mario didn't have chance to go anywhere. Then our teachers assistant suggested that we get a game going to distract them. The kids clearly wanted to play tag so Mario gave them some rules and they all scattered. We played for a few moments then made our way back inside while the children where occupied.
That's honestly the story on the day. It was like almost everywhere we went. If the kids where already in a game they didn't seem to notices us, but most of the children who weren't came right over. It's apparent that the children knew we where in just costumes, but they seemed to love playing along. It honestly made the day a lot more adventurous, and in a way made me feel like I was five again too. Hands down this was the most memorable lab experience to date!

Sharring a part of me with you

Seeing how my professor was kind enough to help integrate our class into the world of technology, and share that with us, I decided to share something too. Evan Tanner happens to have been and despite his passing still is an inspirational factor to my life. This video shows some of his thoughts on life and selflessness. To my understanding he was not only a very adventurous man, but one who lived a life worth leading. Once he heard of a playground being constructed for children he had never met or known, and it is said he called to volunteer. He's a man who had many money troubles, and without hesitation flew down the location to help out, simply because he felt it was a great cause. This is simply one kind act out of many, but never the less it is one that I find extremely inspirational. He's a large inspiration to my life because he lived a life full of adventure but he always seemed to look beyond himself. If you're interested in him, or anything about him, feel free to ask me or Google his name. Also He has a blog page that many consider to be more than how everyone blogs now, it's been referenced as reading a man's soul.

Harry Harlow's monkey experimentations

Harry Harlow's experiment demonstrated the importance of care-giving on a monkey's development. His experiment involved placing a baby rhesus monkey into a in caged location with A mother model made out of wire, and a second wire model with a cloth covering. With multiple groups he'd place a feeding bottle on either the wire or cloth model. To his findings regardless of which mother model provide the monkey with food, the monkey's built their dependency on the cloth model. This shows that comfort is extremely important to the monkey, It even favors comfort over the mother who feeds it. It's interesting to think that this could very much so apply to human infants as well. "This assembly covers about 97 percent of the genome and is based on 6X ... Initial sequence of the chimpanzee genome and comparison with the human genome" (http://genome.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin/hgGateway?db=panTro2). This statement shows that scientist have mapped out the human genome, and it is 97% equivalent to that of a chimpanzee. Showing that humans are much like monkeys, so this study could very likely allow us to better understand the cognitive development of humans!

Having fun at St. Mary's

St. Mary's was a lot of fun, as always this time around. With the exception of being nervous the few games, these experiences have been a lot of fun. This time I had the children play a game where the objective was to kick a soccer ball into the other teams pins located at opposite ends of the court. It's just like soccer except with multiple balls, and instead of a goal there were pins. I figured it involve a lot more running with multiple balls, and be a lot more exercise for the kids. I just recently began playing soccer and though it's a lot of fun, it has a far amount of down time. The game worked well for running, but It was a failure in the assessing category. It was difficult for the girl being assessed to be seen clearly kicking a ball. So my teacher then had me change the game up by making the kids break into two kid teams. This allowed everyone to kick the ball a lot more, and made it into a whole new game. Also we realized just one or two kids can dictate the game for the rest of them. During another students game I noticed one kid always held the ball for a long period of time. This could have caused some kids to become bored with the game from it slowing down. Or if one or two kids shoot down a game, it may influence others to follow.

Particular lessons are only learned through experience

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Let Experience be your teacher

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