Ah, remember the days of running to the playground to play your daily round of Kickball! Teams were negotiated and play was intense. So many of us have those great memories, that kickball has made a comeback in the form of adult leagues–WAKA. The game makes great sense to us–a alternative to baseball–but to the average kindergarner… kickball can be confusing! So instead of explained a dozen rules, why not try this fun variation–that works on skills building and some of the most fun parts of kickball. The Game of the Week is… Crazy Kickball!
Group Size: Large group (10 or more)
Age Group: Pre K – Grade 5
Length of Activity: 10 minutes or more
Developmental Goal: To develop teamwork, depth-perception, and eye-hand and eye-foot coordination.
Equipment: Bases, Cones, Hula Hoops, Kickballs
Before You Start:
- On a traditional kickball field, place a large container that can hold many balls at the pitcher’s mound, a hula hoop also works well.
- Mark the outfield with numbers for half the group. The numbers should designate outfield play positions. Positions can be marked with cones (with numbers) or chalk.
- Do not put positions farther into the outfield than you expect the students to kick.
- Discuss the importance of staying at your position, calling your ball and, if necessary, passing the ball to teammates in the outfield.
- Also inform students to stay behind the pitcher while students are kicking.
- Have everyone run the bases once all together in a line, calling out each base as they each it, to reinforce the base line and direction of running.
- This is a good game to teach the basic concepts of fielding and passing while staying in a position zone as well as running the bases. With all this action, everyone is involved.
Set Up:
Set up field with balls at pitcher's mound, bases and fielding positions marked.
How To Play:
- Divide the group into kicking and fielding teams and give each child on each team a number. The numbers denote the kicking order and their positions in the field.
- Kickers come up one at a time. As leader, you pitch to them. They kick the ball into the field and run around the bases continuously for a homerun.
- Emphasize to the runners that they need to touch each base with their foot.
- While one kicker runs, the next kicker comes up to home plate and kicks.
- There are many balls so there can be many runners going around the bases at a time.
- The fielders retrieve the kicked balls, pass them infield and put them into the container, at the pitcher's mound.
- The fielders are trying to quickly pass the balls infield to keep the container full.
- Tell the fielders to get the balls that come toward their position and throw them inward to the nearest player until the ball gets back into the container.
- Encourage students to pass the ball to each other rather than running it all the way back.
- When the whole kicking team has kicked and run the bases one time, the teams switch roles.
Variations:
- For older students who know the game of kickball, players can stop at any base and wait for the next kick before continuing to run.
- Allow more than one player can be on a base at a time.
- You could try allowing players to be tagged out in between bases.
Find more new and exciting games in our games library!
