Self Motivated and Self Directed Games

The first game that my group had developed needed 5 hula hoops, 5 hockey sticks and 1 indoor hockey ball. For this game, each person needed to have a hula hoop and a hockey stick. Four of the students would position their hula hoop about 3 meters away from each other and in the shape of a square and the fifth person would position their hula hoop in the very center of the 4 other hula hoops. Like so:

 

 

Each person would then grab their hockey sticks and stand inside one of the 5 hula hoops. The 4 students standing in the outer 4 hula hoops, would begin to pass the hockey ball amongst each other. The object of the game would be for the center person to try and intercept the passes from the 4 outside people and the 4 outside people would try to keep their passes away from the center person. The people in the outer hula hoops would have to keep both feet in at all times, while the middle person could have one foot out of the hula hoop and one foot inside the hula hoop.

 

 

If the middle person intercepted the pass between two people from an outside hula hoop the person to last touch the ball would than switch places with the person in the middle. If a person from one of the outside hula hoops had a bad pass to another person resulting in them having to step out of their hula hoop to retrieve the ball, the person who did the bad pass would have to switch places with the person in the middle.

This game I think would be a good game for children in grades 2 - 3, because it helps teach children hand eye coordination and does not require the pressure of much movement when doing it. A modification I think could be done to this game, would be to add another ball when passing amongst each other. Or by adding more players by making the playing area larger and adding more players on the outside and another person in the middle trying in intercept.

 

Another game that my group came up with needed  some cloth potato sacks, 2 hula hoops, some plastic paddles and a foam ball. The paddles that we used were like ping pong paddles but larger and plastic. To begin this game you will need to divide your group into two teams. (You wouldn’t want any more than 5 people per team so that everyone would get an equal amount of playing time, so the number of participants you had would determine the number of teams you would get.) In our group we had an odd number of people so for this game we played boys versus girls, which worked out to be 2 versus 3.

 

Once everyone was divided into 2 teams, the 2 hula hoops were positioned about 7 meters away from each other. The 2 hula hoops were the goals in the game. Each team had to try to get the foam ball into the opposing team’s hula hoop. You could hit the foam ball on the ground, using the paddle like a stick, you could bounce the ball on the paddle or you could balance the ball on the paddle. You could only move the ball along with the paddle, players could not use any other body part to try and get the ball to the goal. All players must also be in a cloth potato sack.

 

Players may hop, shuffle or slide around, as long as both feet remain in the potato sack. To begin the game, the 2 teams had to be divided by a line and 1 player from each team would join in the middle to do a face off. Once the instructor yells “GO!” the foam ball is on the ground and the 2 players would face off and try and get the foam ball to their teammates and into the opposing teams hula hoop. 

This game I think would be a good game for children in grades 5 - 6 because, it does require strong hand eye coordination and balance. A good modification for this game would be to limit how you can move the ball. Either players could balance or bounce or hit the ball not all 3 choices. By limiting the ways that players could move the ball to the goals, adds a certain degree of difficulty to the game.

 

 

With each of these games, the main goal that we aimed to achieve was team work and equal participation. These games aimed to include every person in the activites and that they all had the same amount of playing time. However, the skill that these 2 games aimed to work on was, hand eye coordination. With the amount of passing that needed to go on, in either a stationary or non stationary position, these games needed correct passing amongst teammates in order for the team to succeed.

I personally enjoyed working together in groups to try and figure out new games. It was great having everyones input on your ideas, or just adding in their own ideas to make up a game. My group worked very well together, listening to each other and trying out whatever others came up with as a group. The one thing I thought was challenging was the amount of time we had to acctually come up with a game. The one station that was the most challenging was the one that had all the bean bags and the giant rubber bands. With only 6 minutes to create a fun game that included everybody proved to be a fun and exciting challenge!