ideas for active, cooperative kids' games?
Or, spring cannot possibly get here soon enough.
I'm the leader of Chuckles' Brownie troop (that's 2nd and 3rd graders). I'm pretty good at coming up with physically active learning activities outdoors when the weather is nice, but I am scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to indoor activities. Here are the parameters I'm working with:
(1) The meetings are an hour and a half long. Even when we do sit-down activities for the main event, it would be nice to have 20-30 minutes of active stuff. There are eight girls in the troop. The school gym is available for our use.
(2) We have a huge range of physical skills in the troop. A couple of the girls are extremely athletic, a few are in the middle, and a couple are slow and clumsy.
(3) You know which category Chuckles is in, right? The other girl who is physically non-gifted has a pretty good sense of humor about it and is happy to play games even when she doesn't win. Chuckles, on the other hand.... Here's an example: I found a variation on dodgeball that I thought would be okay for her. The kids each stand in front of a chair and they each try to hit each other's chairs with the ball (using only kicking, not throwing). If your chair gets tagged, you're not out of the game -- you just have to sit down in your chair and you can keep playing from there. But even so, when her chair was the first one tagged, she spent the next half hour with tears in her eyes, sulking and refusing to participate. Chuckles is by far the worst, but there are other girls in the troop who are sensitive about winning/losing issues, too, so I would just as soon avoid that dynamic where possible.
Here's an example of an activity that was a hit with everyone: I divided them into teams and they played career charades, acting out different jobs for the other team to guess. They also liked our dance party, where we tried out different styles of music and different dances.
Anyone have any other ideas along those lines? This is so not my area of expertise. I was a pretty sedentary kid with a long attention span, and so is Chuckles. The Brownie Try-It book is full of activities for people like us -- but most of the troop does not do well with that approach. I could just turn them loose in the gym with a bunch of playground balls and let them blow off some steam, but I'd rather come up with activities that have some other dimension to them.
This entry was originally posted at http://loligo.dreamwidth.org/416673.html.
comments on that entry. Comments on Dreamwidth preferred.
I'm the leader of Chuckles' Brownie troop (that's 2nd and 3rd graders). I'm pretty good at coming up with physically active learning activities outdoors when the weather is nice, but I am scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to indoor activities. Here are the parameters I'm working with:
(1) The meetings are an hour and a half long. Even when we do sit-down activities for the main event, it would be nice to have 20-30 minutes of active stuff. There are eight girls in the troop. The school gym is available for our use.
(2) We have a huge range of physical skills in the troop. A couple of the girls are extremely athletic, a few are in the middle, and a couple are slow and clumsy.
(3) You know which category Chuckles is in, right? The other girl who is physically non-gifted has a pretty good sense of humor about it and is happy to play games even when she doesn't win. Chuckles, on the other hand.... Here's an example: I found a variation on dodgeball that I thought would be okay for her. The kids each stand in front of a chair and they each try to hit each other's chairs with the ball (using only kicking, not throwing). If your chair gets tagged, you're not out of the game -- you just have to sit down in your chair and you can keep playing from there. But even so, when her chair was the first one tagged, she spent the next half hour with tears in her eyes, sulking and refusing to participate. Chuckles is by far the worst, but there are other girls in the troop who are sensitive about winning/losing issues, too, so I would just as soon avoid that dynamic where possible.
Here's an example of an activity that was a hit with everyone: I divided them into teams and they played career charades, acting out different jobs for the other team to guess. They also liked our dance party, where we tried out different styles of music and different dances.
Anyone have any other ideas along those lines? This is so not my area of expertise. I was a pretty sedentary kid with a long attention span, and so is Chuckles. The Brownie Try-It book is full of activities for people like us -- but most of the troop does not do well with that approach. I could just turn them loose in the gym with a bunch of playground balls and let them blow off some steam, but I'd rather come up with activities that have some other dimension to them.
This entry was originally posted at http://loligo.dreamwidth.org/416673.html.
comments on that entry. Comments on Dreamwidth preferred.