Activity that supports Physical Development Concept Covered: Gross motor skills- throwing and kicking Age of Child:

3 years old Standards: According to the Virginia Early Childhood Milestones: Physical Development and Health Strand 1 Gross Motor Skills, a child 48 months or older should be able to coordinate movements in more complex gross motor skills, such as throwing and kicking. Learning Objective: After this lesson the child should be able to kick and throw a ball at a preschool aged level. Materials Needed: 1 soccer ball 3 markers or cones Outdoor or indoor area to do the activity Strategies: Before activity: I will set up three targets in an outside area using markers or cones. The markers will be able 56 feet away from the childs throwing/kicking point. Part 1: I will ask the child to accompany me outside to complete the activity. I will ask the child to pick up the soccer ball and throw it at the first target. I will have him repeat this two more times. I will then ask the child to throw the ball at the second target. I will have him repeat this two more times. I will then ask the child to throw the ball at the last target. I will have him repeat this two more times. Part 2 will be identical to part 1, but instead of throwing the ball I will have him kick the ball. Assessment: If the child successfully kicks and throws the ball at each of the three targets (using coordinated movements, balance, and control), than his gross motor skills are developing typically for a preschool aged child. Results/Reflection: The child really enjoys doing all sports so he was extremely excited when presented with this activity. Thankfully I was able to do this activity on a nice day. I set up markers (a soccer marker, a tennis ball, and a large purple Frisbee) along the fence line. During Part 1 of the activity the child successfully threw the ball towards the targets, but was often unable to throw the ball close to the target. When doing this activity in the future, I will make the throwing distance shorter because the child hard some trouble throwing the ball close to the targets. I placed the targets too far away from the childs throwing point. During Part 2 of the activity the child not only successfully kicked the ball using balance and control, but also hit the target every time. He kicked much further than he could throw. When implementing this activity in the future I will shorten the distance between the childs throwing point and the targets (34 feet instead of 5-6 feet). In the future I will also use orange cones instead of various colored/shaped markers. The child did not appear to have any problem seeing the markers in the grass, but I would like them to be more uniform and visible.