Games

Joaquin Miller Elementary School 27th Annual Harvest Feast - 2004

Great weather, good health enjoyed by all, wonderful food and engaging tasks and crafts. I'd 'make this journey again.'
The children and the volunteer parents all seemed to enjoy the delightful games of the past. The 'boff game, with the large, brown, soft-stuffed pillows and the very low balance beam was the favorite, by far.
My suggestion for Games is just to make sure that there is a good adult to child ratio. This is a 'guided' or 'directed' activity. Some children were sent away from cooking or crafts to return to games, because they were misbehaving.. I would recommend against that practice. It is not fair to the parent volunteer working on Games, nor to the children whose turn it is to do Games.. This is NOT a babysitting assignment. In order to actually benefit, learn from and enjoy this designated part of the feast activities, the children need to participate, cooperate and wait their turns, etc. The children engaging in undesirable behavior had in fact already conducted themselves in a similar manner during their turn at games.
Getting burdened twice by the same very high maintenance children was hard on the parent volunteers who had already put in their time trying to secure their good behavior and cooperation. Nor was it a positive experience for the children who were trying to enjoy their Games assignment. The mere fact of physical activity does not cause a disruptive child to improve his/her behavior. I could not discover a valid justification for double-burdening the Games volunteer parents. If a disruptive child is sent back down to games (after already having a session there); I recommend escorting the child back to the site that dismissed him or her. The adults there must deal with them. You already did. The parent volunteers in charge of the child must compel appropriate behavior or mete out and manage the discipline themselves, rather than dumping the problem child on parents who have already done their fair share working with those children.
This is a delightful assignment. Protect it, so that it can be a good experience for everyone. It can be hard work to ensure maximum enjoyable participation for each child in a group. You can fairly be expected to handle disruptive children well, while preserving the fun and high spirits of the day for all of the students. Having met that
obligation to not allow other parent volunteers to inappropriately impose on you by
compelling you to 'babysit' troublesome children. That is NOT your assignment. It distinctly acts as a 'reward' to the badly behaved child. After observing a 3rd disruptive child being sent to Games; one boy stated: "You mean all I have to do to get TWO turns at Games is act bad? I could do that." He had a valid point!

[Editor’s note: See teachers for additional information on this subject.]

Previous Feasts:

Games 2005
Games 2004
Games 2003
Games 2001
Games 2000
Games 1999
Games 1998
Games 1997
Games Description
Games Instructions
Games Letter to Volunteers
Games Rotations

We had a case of light rain on the night before, and a massive fog attack in the early morning. But while the grass was wet, the ground wasn't particularly muddy. We set up on the baselines of the ballpark, so the ground was hard. Only the boffing game was set up on the infield. We didn't set up the tug-o-war until later in the day so the kids didn't get too wet.

The balance beam for the boffing game was missing, so I picked up another one. Rob Kayen-Louis made one as well, and it was good to have two, as the kids didn't have to wait long to smack each other. I picked up some of the burlap bags, and one of the big wooden hoops from the Colonial Days setup. I fgured we could have bag races or use the hoop for the marble game. Instead we used the bags for the boffing game.

As a dope, I forgot the beanbags, marbles, and the nuts for the nut game. We didn't miss the marbles, but the beanbags would have been good. I felt that the carboard turkey on the beanbag game was way out of authenticity. So I hung up the hoop from the backstop, and had the kids throw wooden blocks through the moving hoop. They had a great time doing that, and kids kept coming back to it. I think if you do that with beanbags next year it'll be a real winner.

The sun came out and it got fairly warm quickly. We had a large proportion of adults to kids during the morning, as most of the kids were cooking. At one point we had 8 adults for 4 kids. The parents spent a good time chatting, and it didn't seem necessary to break it up, as there were so few kids. Unfortunately, when the cooking was done, the teachers sent them back to the game area without any warning, and we were a bit overwhelmed. If we'd known they were going to come down later, that would have been good.

As this wasn't brain surgery, I did a quick orientation to the kids when they came down, explaining what we had where, and let them play. I tend to be a "let 'em do it themselves & discover" parent rather than a "hands on every moment" type, so we mostly manned anything dangerous, and then floated from game to game to make sure they were playing fair and not fighting. We felt our way through the day without a lot of worrying.

As the morning moved on, and more children showed up, we brought out the tug-o-war game. The kids immediately started trying to pick it up and yank, and I had to stand on it and keep telling them to put it down. The kids played pretty well, but I think I should have had more parents guarding the rope before the kids ever touched it.

During free play after lunch the kids went over to the play structure with some parents. No one was sure if they were supposed to or not, so we let them go. I just had to make sure that the stragglers didn't run across the parking lot.

We ran a race using the tug rope as the start/finish line. the kids had to run down the field, touch a parent, and run back. We didn't have enough parents at the other end, the kids bunched up, and one girl got bonked. That was the closest thing to an injury we had all day. So next year more parents would be good.

So in summary, remember all of your pieces, the hoop game was a great variation on the bean bag toss, more parents for tug & races, find out what happens when the kids are done cooking, and what is allowed during free play.

Call me if you have any questions, Tony Jonick 531-1198