I decided that my voice doesn’t project well over the chitter chatter of 5-6 year olds. So today I have a whistle with me (an essential piece of kit for any facilitator – well it worked for the Von- Trapps !!!!)

Anyway we began with a warm up session and we do ‘five little monkey’s’ and all the actions that go with it.  The children especially enjoyed using their feet for the phone.  I’m then informed that this will be the last week of Stretch & Play because there are a lot of other activities happening within the school.

So I decide to make it a fun week and let the children decide on what activity they want to do today.  I’m suddenly bombarded with requests for the bear hunt.  Which we do and the children are hysterical and screaming when we ‘find’ the bear.  Bring on the whistle!!!!!.  So with everyone settled we play a game of hot potato, boys against girls and it goes down really well, with Garbhan (the bain of my life for the last 5 weeks) winning and becoming an instant hero with the boys, and now my new best friend.  We ended the session with parachute games.

As you can see it has been a very eventful and thoroughly enjoyable experience.  I feel that dealing with such large numbers has really been like an initiation and I feel totally capable of facilitating any group.  I learned from Victoria that you have to be able to think on your feet and always have a plan B!!!!!!. Till the next time. Hayley xx

THE WEATHER WAS AWFUL !!!!! So we had to do Stretch & Play indoors.  So me and 41 rowdy children were cooped up in a tiny prefab for one whole hour ( I must have been so bad in a former life to deserve this!!!!)
Anyway we used the weather as our theme and started off in a circle, using our fingertips to make the sound of the rain, then the rain got heavier so we used our hands to slap the floor, then came the thunder so now we are stamping our feet louder and louder and shaking our bodies for the lightning, trying to give instructions over the ‘din’ was impossible, so I went home that day with no voice.

This was by far my favourite week.  I decided to join both P1 and P2 together!!! (I know I need to be sectioned at the very thought of it).  However I felt that the change over between the two groups meant missing out valuable Stretch & Play time as it took forever to line the children up and swap groups.

Anyway the school were having a book week, so I decided to bring along my favourite book and read it to keep with the theme of book week.  I gathered all the children around me and began to read, ‘we’re going on a bear hunt’.  The children LOVED it and were soon screaming out all the lines that were repeated in the story.  I asked the children if they wanted to go on a bear hunt, you can guess the response.  It was great fun outside pretending to go through the swishy swashy grass, the sticky, icky mud and so on.

The session went really well and I felt that the children got a lot from it.  Can’t wait now till next week.

I’m a lot more confident this week and decide to keep the groups separate again, as there are such big numbers.  I started off with P1 we did a few warm up activities like ‘flying hands’ and ‘gloomy cloud’.  We then talked about the farm and sang ‘Old Mac Donald’ and did all the animal stretches.  We finished off the session with ‘human bop-it’ which they really enjoyed.

For P2 this week we started off in a circle and did ‘down in the jungle’ with each child naming a jungle animal we then pretended to go to the jungle and find all the animals, when we got to the elephants we managed a very successful elephant chain.  I did bop-it with this group also and they thoroughly enjoyed it.  Went home feeling on top of the world, and exhausted!!!

Oh my God what an eye opener, I felt physically sick at the thought of my first day doing Stretch & Play.  Had it not been for Victoria turning up I would have done a runner.  I just froze and it was up to Victoria to take over, the P1 class were sooooooo challenging and after a half hour session I was ready to end my contract and auction my S&P T-shirt on ebay!!!!

Thankfully by the time we started the session with the P2 class my nerves had settled a bit and everything went really well.

 We imagined that we were going underwater to an island and we did all the stretches for the sea creatures along the way.  When we got to the island we smothered on our sun-cream and lay down on the warm sand, where I then led a relaxation session.  3.15pm finally arrived and I had survived the very first session of Stretch & Play.!!!!!!  Oh no not long till next week, I better get planning.