Black light mini golf!

I heard about the blacklight mini golf at shipwreak a few weeks ago and thought that Willie might really enjoy that. So today we went to shipwreak and he loved it! Luckily he was wearing a white t-shirt so he really glowed under the blacklight. The facility made a very awesome course that had multiple themes. One theme was the jungle and it had elephants, gorillas, alligators and lions around the course at each hole. When you went around the corner there were pirates and treasure. Willie didn't like the pirates he thought they were scary! Lastly, there was an underwater theme with sea turtles, sharkes and jelly fish.




I think he really loved it, he was constantly yelling, "Holly look at this! look at this!" and pointing to a drawing on the wall. He loved how his shoe laces glowed and his t-shirt. He actually beat me by 3 strokes, it was a very close game!

HOCKEY!!!

Last Friday I had practice the same time that Willie was coming to Cortland. I had asked him before if we would like to learn how to skate and he said yes, so this was a great oppertunity. Not only did he get to learn how to skate, but also try some ice hockey!

My roommate luckily is the same size as Willie so we got some equipment from him to fit Willie. When we got out on the ice he was pretty scared at first about falling and hurting himself, but I kept telling him thats what the helmet is for and it's ok to fall lots of people do it! One of the girls got him a ice walker, which is an assistance device to help him work on getting use to the ice without having to worry about falling because he can put all his weight on the walker. He then started zooming around on the walker and finally we got him to skate a little with just the hockey stick. When he got tired he would go sit on the bench and one of the girls would come over and keep him company so it was great for him socially!

At the end of practice he took a few shots on the net and all the girls cheered I don't think I have ever seen a smile so big on his face before! I think he had an awesome time and it was a great experience for him.

Racquetball!

Tuesday the 21st I met with Willie again for a second time. First we went and got lunch and he liked being surrounded by all the college students and the atmosphere. Next we did a scavenger hunt around park center and Lusk field house. He liked finding the clues, but he REALLY did not like running. He gets out of breath and tired very quickly. I also noticed that if there was a college student in the hall way he would stop dead in his tracks and walk, I am thinking this is maybe a I don't want to look like a fool running around thing.
Next we went down into the racquetball courts because I felt like he asked a lot of questions about racquetball at our last meeting. We had a bigger ball so it did not bounce as fast as a regular racquetball. I think this did help especially with his hand eye coordination. After racquetball we played handball which is a game he learned at school and I had never played before so it was a learning experience for me. After that we went into the racquetball court with the golf net and practiced our football punting because all the gymnasiums were taken up. However the net was nice and bumped the ball back to us. Lastly, we worked on snapping the football to each other.

First meeting..

I met with my student for the first time on Friday December 17th. When he arrived he had just had swim practice at the college pool, so he was tired. I created a poster and at the top is his physical activity goal, which is going to be, "be a better football player." Under the dream is listed four goals that will work toward the dream and for every goal he achieves he gets a reward, ex) Hiking at Lime Hallow. I also created a "playbook," which is a notebook compiling all the things we worked on this semester for reference later after the program is over. In the first section of the notebook, is the exercises we do and learn in class. Last meeting we did exercises you can do with a rope, ex) jump rope, jump rope push ups and ski jumpers. This was to show him you don't need fancy equipment to get a work out. The next section is our step log, we will be wearing pedometers to record the amount of steps we take every lesson. He learned that you need to take at least 10,000 steps a day! We took 3,501 steps during our meeting on Friday! The next section is football plays that we will learn this semester that I had photocopied out of my football notebook. The last section is a behavior log, he gets a sticker at the end of the lesson if he behaved the entire lesson.

When we started we did the warm up, but he said he was really tired from swim class and did not really try in the warm up. Next we worked on catching and throwing which he is pretty good at! However, we noticed that one thing we need to work on is punting and it will be one of our goals this semester. Next, we ran some plays and tried to reach 10 successful plays with out dropping a pass. Lastly, I placed hoops on the wall in which he had to throw the football to the middle of the hoop color I called out. After we were finished I took him on a tour around park center and the field house so he gets an idea of other activities we can do this semester. We will be meeting again on Tuesday!