How do you entertain 3 and 4-year-olds for an hour? Apparently, NOT with soccer practice. It always starts out well. They stretch and run a lap or two. By this point we have only lost the ones who fell or needed their shoes tied. Oh, yeah, and the one that had to go to the bathroom. The next few games go well, losing only a few due to the already mentioned problems. Only 50 minutes left to go.
Unless you are holding a very large piece of candy in your hand, the attention span of a preschooler is about 30 seconds. The problem: that is not enough time to give a set of directions that they can understand. This is also assuming you were able to get them all to sit down at the same time, otherwise one child's 30 second attention span is ending just as you get another child to join the circle.
Let's talk about the command, "go get your ball and come to the middle of the field." Translation of a preschooler - Spin in a circle until I figure out at which end of the field I left my ball, fall over because I'm dizzy, run down to my ball, start to pick it up but remember I'm not allowed to touch it with my hands so jump backwards away from the ball, kick it into the nearest goal, cheer for myself and make sure my mom saw it and gives me the thumbs up sign, do a somersault, wait-a-minute wasn't I suppose to be doing something? Whys is that big coach guy yelling my name? Hey, look, dandelions!
Oh, to find so many things exciting and fascinating. As I think about the ticker that is the child's mind, I crave the intensity and interest that is experienced each and every moment. Always trying to figure things out, wanting to check things out, such curiosity. As a teacher, I would love to bottle that curiosity and spoon feed it to my students each morning.
Maybe I should try holding up a piece of candy!
2 comments:
Kids are amazing.
i loved this post! i could just picture in my head what you were describing!
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