Last Swimming Session

On Friday we had our last swimming session. We wore our pyjamas in the water and we did three activities each.

“You had to curl up in a ball and then the teacher rolled you down. The other way was sliding down on your tummy”

“I felt scared at first, but when I went into the water, it was fun.”

“When I did it at first, I was scared because the water was so deep. The second time I liked it”

“I felt scared the first time but the second time I didn’t”

“It was really just fun. I had lots of fun the whole time”

“I felt scared because I didn’t know when she was going to push me in and I was scared the first time but when I was in the water I wasn’t scared any more”

“We had to put on life jackets and we had to jump in the deep end and we floated. It was fun”

“We did a star fish and we made a circle”

“There was this big grey carpet made out of plastic and you had to try and swim in the middle and then swim back out. You’re not allowed to touch the carpet (tarpaulin)”

“It was really easy ‘cause you just have to swim through”

“I felt nervous because I thought you had to come out the other end and I wasn’t sure which way to go”

“I felt a bit nervous and a bit okay because I found my way through – I could see daylight through the hole”

·“There was this activity and you had to swim through the seaweed and then pop up in the middle and swim out the other end”

There were some other activities, too.

· “There was an activity and you had to lie down on your belly and hold this long thing, it’s called a noodle. The person in the water holds on to the noodle and then you pull them up, so it’s learning to save people. You need to tell them to hold onto the noodle”

· Another activity was similar “You had to throw the person a kick board and say ‘swim to me’ and they had to swim to you and get up on the edge”.

· “There was this black thing and it looked like seaweed and in the last one I felt a little bit nervous because the part where you had to go in was under the water”

How did you feel at the end?

“I feel good because it was really fun because swimming is really fun”

“I felt a bit brave because I really liked it”

“I felt a little bit scared they were new activities. (At the end) I felt more confident”

“At the end, I felt like I had a fun swimming lesson”

Transition

Our last 2 transition sessions have continued in the same groups as previous weeks.  We completed our last remaining activity, before we started a new round of activities.

Nerida ran more physical/sports activities. First we played Snowballs and Snow Creatures. One child held a tennis ball (snowball) to symbolise that he/she was a snow creature. The snow creature had to chase the children and touch them with their snowball (no throwing or the snowball would melt), which would turn them into a snow creature. That snow creature would go to the snow factory and get a snowball and convert more children! The last child remaining was declared the golden child with the power of the sun, and they then chased the snow creatures and melted them. Each child who melted had to put their snowball back in the snow factory and chase more snow creatures to melt them. After this fun warm up game, children got into groups (a prep and two grade ones or twos) and each group got some tennis balls. They worked together to create a show or performance. The aim was twofold: to get to know other children and work as a team; and to creatively use tennis balls. 

Genevieve has been running team work and get to know you and team work games.  First of all, we tried to untangle a human knot.  We arranged ourselves into groups of about 10, stood shoulder to shoulder in a circle, stretched our hands out and grabbed the hands of 2 other people.  Then we had to try and untangle ourselves so we ended up standing in a circle without letting go of our hands.  This involved a lot of listening, giving each other advice (and occasionally ignoring the advice), trial and error, and trying not to fall over in a big heap.

We also played a game called 2 truths.  Everyone thought of 2 things about themselves that the other people in the group didn't know about them, and also made up 1 thing about themselves that was not true.  Each person had a turn at telling their 3 things to the audience, who then had to figure out from their face and voice (and how well they know the person) which of their three things was not true.