Indoor Bowling Alley

The most hectic part of our day is from 4.30pm to bed time. And it is usually during the making of dinner when both little ones seem to run out of puff for entertaining themselves.

So I set them up with an activity and/or task that keeps them busy for ten or so minutes at a time - long enough for me to complete the dinner process.

Today, I used a part of the kitchen as a Ten Pin Bowling Alley. I set them up with the bucket of soft indoor balls and a set of light plastic bowling pins. But instead of bowling, we practised our kicking.

I talk first about comfortable/stronger leg and foot - the dominant one, and the balance foot/leg - the non-dominant one. I demonstrate the process quite often so that they see the action - and I encourage their attempts to quickly follow the demonstration. This, I feel is important during the cognitive stage of learning.

See it and then quickly have a go at it.

The non-dominant foot is placed to the side and behind the ball while the dominant leg swings into the ball with the toe making contact with ball. Having a bucket of balls handy means there is less time wasted fielding the ball.

This task today was a confidence booster as the pins fell down easily.

Our kicking fairies got many strikes by foot today.