Cone Guardian | Playworks

Positive language and risk assessment. Skills practiced include throwing and hand/eye coordination.

Let students know that when they’re in line they will also be acting as a boundary/wall to keep the dodgeballs from going by.
Choose one student per cone to help demonstrate. Have them each stand by their cone, without their feet touching it.

Spread all cones out in the playing area, fairly equally spaced. You will need 6-8 tall cones (lighter plastic cones).
Decide on a boundary line where the rest of the class will line up when waiting to get into the game (you will want this to be the side of the playing area that doesn’t have a natural boundary/you really do not want the ball going past).

On the magic word, any player in the game (player with a cone) can pick up a dodgeball and try to throw it to knock over another player’s cone.
If a player’s cone is knocked over, they get high fives and go to the end of the line. The next person in line enters the game and takes their cone.
Players may protect their cone by using their hands to shield it. If the dodgeball hits the player, nothing happens, they are only trying to knock over cones.
Players may NOT step on any part of their cone to try to to protect it.
If a player does accidentally knock over their own cone, they still get high fives and go to the back of the line.
At any point, a player may leave his/her cone to go get a dodgeball, but any other player may still try to knock his/her cone over while s/he is away from it.
DEBRIEF: How did you decide when to leave your cone to get a dodgeball? Could we still be positive to our friends when they got out?

If older students are too good at protecting their cones, you can add a hula hoop around each cone and make the player stay outside of the hula hoop to protect their cone.