I was put on PE duty for my summer school class and it has been quite an experience! I worked at the Utah State Hospital on the children's unit. Sadly this means there are no pictures of these games being played, but I do have blurry, bad sketches (my camera battery is dying) and I'll try and explain as best I can.
The first game I introduced to play with the kiddos on Children's Unit was Red-Light Green Light. It's a pretty basic game that almost everyone has played before. It seems that the expectations are pretty clear, but no! "I'm not getting a turn!", "He's cheating!", which then leads to other kids generally goofing around and poking each other. Blah! We left the room with more frowns than smiles, so that was no good. So I searched the internet for carefully for another game that might work better. I won't trouble with a sketch unless someone really professes that they don't know what it looks like.
Ultimate Camp Resource is where I found most of my games. It was a great source for a lot of group games. Only some were adaptable to this setting, but they were tons of great ideas that could be used for parties, daycares or preschool. Game play is always good practice for social skills!
Anyway, I had seen Four Corners played while I was observing a student before and it is a super simple game which requires very little in the way of materials. You have four labled corners as far apart as you want. Each child in the group has to the count of five to pick a corner to stand by except the one child in the middle that is blindfolded. The blindfolded child picks a corner and everyone at that corner is out. The remaining children then have to the count of five to pick another corner and the child in the middle then picks a corner again. This continues until only one child remains. This child is now the child in the middle and all those that were out get a go at it again. It's pretty quick and is inclusive of all levels of althletic ability, so most of the kids liked it and didn't complain.
One game that I thought would be fun, but turned out not so good with this group of kids was Fruit Salad. It's kid of like musical chairs in a way. I had pictures of fruit taped to the floor of the PE room, but it can also be done witht the fruit on chairs, we just didn't have extra chairs available. There is a child in the middle and they yell out the name of a fruit. Three chairs/spots should be labeled with that fruit. The child in the middle is trying to get a seat from those they called out and the children that left their chairs/spot need to be in a different chair/spot. The result is that one child will be left in the middle. If the child in the middle does not think they are very fast or really wants to get the mayhem going they call out, "Fruit Salad!" and everyone has to change chairs/spots. One reason this game didn't work out with my group was some of them didn't like standing for so long and wanted to sit or were really slow moving so it was exciting like it should have been. Also, some kids wanted to be in the middle and self-sabotaged which messed up the game and then some of my kiddos were just slow processors so it took them a while to make a decision on what fruit to call out or they would call out a fruit and forget to try and get a seat. . But it was still fun and only resulted in minor complaints.
One game the kids liked, but the adults kind of hated was Poison Ball. Our PE room had tons of different balls because the kids loved to play dodgeball, but it is such a toxic game...blah. But the fact that we had tons of soft type balls was great for this game. Poison Ball is a game where the kids each defended their line from a giant ball. You could use a beach ball or we used a giant therapy/exercise ball. We divided the room in half with groups on each side trying to keep the ball from going over the line on their side by throwing a small ball at it. Scoring worked like golf where getting points was bad. If a child needed to cross their line to get a new ball to defend with, they could, but they could not touch the poison ball or else it counted as a point against their team. They also could not cross thier line to throw the ball and if they did it was an automatic point for their team. If anybody purposely threw their ball at another kid and not the poison ball, they were out of the game. The kids loved this game, but the adults hated it because there were those kids that would just target another kid.
A really simple game that the kids loved when they wanted to be semi-lazy was Fire on the Mountain. All the kids, but one need to be lying flat on the ground face up. One kid is standing up and when he feels like it, calls out, "Fire on the Mountain" and the other kids need to stand up as quick as possible. Last student to get up is out. The others all lay back down until the caller yells Fire on the Mountain again, with the process repeating until only one kid is left.
Another game that both students and adults liked was Who Am I? I marked spots on the floor in a circle because in a game like this kids have a tendency to try to wander in the path of the person in the middle so they will get picked. (Imagine that?!) So in this game the students are all in a circle with one in the middle blindfolded. The blindfolded person wanders up to someone and touches their outstretched hand with a ruler and the person touched had to disguise their voice and say "Who am I?". If guessed correctly, they change places and that person is now in the middle and all students must shuffle their spot. If not then the students still shuffle to give them some movement and the person in the middle tries again. (We used a ruler because we have varying heights because of varying ages in our group, so when it was wander and guess it was based on height and not how they disguised their voice. More like-sized groups could forgo the ruler).
One other game that was really only fun for a few minutes was Human Pinball. The kids created a closed circle with their feet, turned upside down and used their hands like pinball flappers to defend between thier legs and hit the ball away from them. I don't even remember whether you kept score, but it was sure fun to watch!
Summer School at the State Hospital was really fun and I'm glad I did it! Not just for the fiscal benefit of getting paid, but because it was fun coming up with games and taking on the challege of making these kids smile. I hope my bad drawings and descriptions will benefit the few of you who read my blog the next time you are trying to think of an activity.
