Looking back over the year that we have just finished, one of the characteristics of this group has been their interest in organised sport – not something that you might think of with 4 and 5 year olds, but hey, this is the Mallee!
Last week we had a “hurdles” competition going – really a form of high jump but using the hurdles set up.
Now this is interesting because they played this a few times earlier in the year but this time around there was a lot more organisation involved. For a start there were teams, and guess what – it was boys onto girls.
Joel and Samuel were the movers and shakers, and they soon had 8 other children keen to take part.
They soon worked out that they needed some way to keep track of who had had a go, and to make sure the teams took it in turns.
Out came the trusty clipboards, then there was a bit of a debate. Joel thought they only needed a B for the boys and a G for the girls – but how could they keep track of individual goes? Sam gave the girls the clipboard for them to write their names on it. Ben wanted to help keep score, and then Jaxon wanted to as well, so all this took more time to get organised. (along the way there was negotiation, explanation, literacy, penmanship – Joel showed Ben how to write a G, using his left hand, numeracy, working out a scoring procedure…)
There was also some necessary discussion about respecting others’ feelings – so we don’t chant “the boys (or the girls) are winning”.
And then there was the question of how to be fair to children who weren’t so confident – the hurdles were easy to raise or lower, and Sam gave himself the job of setting up according to how the next competitor wanted it.
He also kept score and relayed the result back to the scorers at the other end.
It was interesting that nobody felt the need to change the value of the score for whether the jump was higher or lower – and nobody commented that one was easier than the other.
(In the end the girls won.)
