Ever tried tossing and catching a beanbag with six year olds?  I’ve been doing this for all of two days and I’m sore.  Really sore.  Sure, some of it is related to age and not being in  great shape, but most of it is related to the truly unique tossing styles of these wonderful Kinders.

It’s all for a reason of course.  We’re supposed to be tossing on the beat to a poem:

Froggies are green, froggies are red

Froggies are yellow and blue it’s true

Froggies are fun for everyone

Unless they land on you!

It’s hard of course to actually say it in rhythm when three quarters of the kids either can’t catch or toss the beanbag consistently.  You have little ones who just know they can’t catch it and blink every time it comes in their direction.  You have the kids who don’t know their own strength and I have to reach way over my head to try and grab it.  Then there are the big personalities that have to do “trick” tosses.  There’s the wind up, the wild body contortions, the determined face and then the bean bag goes – well, just about anywhere.  Hence the reason I’m sore.  You just can’t anticipate that kind of thing.

I’m sure that the people who write these kinds of things for kids have experience doing it with, you know, actual KIDS, right?  Have they actually stood in the middle of the circle they describe and tried to toss the bean bag to 6 year olds?  Maybe they handpicked the 6 year olds.  Maybe they put those 6 year olds through a rigorous underhand tossing course before playing the game.  All I know is that it’s a lot harder than the impression given in the book.

This is very similar to elementary methods classes.  You do an activity intended for a certain age of child with college students and don’t allow them to behave like children and voila!  The activity looks so fun and easy.  It can also be taught and implemented in 10 minutes.  This would be compared to the 20 minutes it takes with my 6 year olds.  Then practicum students and student teachers wonder why things don’t go the way they think they should when they work with real kids.

I’m sure that’s the way the general public thinks as well.  After all, we’re just playing a game with a beanbag, right?  They don’t think about the fact that the kids have to memorize a poem, feel the beat of the poem to toss and catch the beanbag, use large motor skills they haven’t necessarily used much before and then do all of this simultaneously.  Nope, it’s just a game.

Well, there are going to be three more days of this fun activity so I’ll be using some Tylenol for the aches to come and look forward to more froggies and trick tosses.