Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Hungry, Hungry Hippos!

Have you seen the human version of hungry, hungry hippos on Facebook??? I saw it and the moment I saw it, I knew I had to do this with my students!! I shared the link on FB with my APE/PE peeps to get their ideas. I spent some time carefully thinking about modifications and meaning. I wanted this to be awesome and fun, yet hands-on and meaningful for my students with little to no vision. We decided to debut it at our most recent program, Girls Weekend/Man Camp as our finale battle of the sexes game. Holy Hannah, we had the BEST TIME EVER!!

Here's how we did it:
1. I bought some regular play balls (that you would use in ball pit). I bought mine from S&S Worldwide. You can buy them anywhere. They are pretty standard. I bought the pack of 100 and realized that with over 20 people playing, I would need more. I would plan on two. 
2. We established the playing area using floor tape. My new fave PE teacher, Nick, made the "game box" similar to a goalball line (we put rope underneath the floor tape to make a tactual boundary). Brilliant idea!
3. We wanted to establish an audible cue to let students know that they were approaching the "game box". We used our trusty beep kickballs for this and had an extra APH sound source on hand. If players captured a beep kickball, it was worth a bonus 25 points. We played two rounds with the beep kickballs and then retired them. We used the beep kickballs as 'training wheels' to teach students about what and where the balls were. 
4. You need to do pre-teach skills with "trapping" (using the baskets to get the balls). Make sure students understand that you can only do one "trap" with the basket. Students quickly figured out effective strategies for getting maximum balls (one popular strategy was when they 'trapped' the ball, they kept their forearms close to the ground so that their arms also 'trapped' balls. 
5. I saw a few versions of the game where they used rope to reel the player back in. I decided to not go this route because I wanted to go for maximum participation from everyone on the team. We had 'drivers' that drove students out and then brought them back. This allowed all students to understand all the facets of the game, especially our students with little to no vision. 

 

 6. Students laid down on two scooter boards that were hooked together. All students who were playing the role of the "hippos" wore goalball goggles. I wasn't sure if everyone knew what goalball goggles looked like so I included a picture. My phone erased my original picture so I borrowed a pic of the goggles online. See below. 

7. We played until all the balls were captured and the each team counted up their total balls. Each time a team sent a "hippo" out to trap balls, they had to change players (both drivers and hippos). This allowed the everyone on the team to get maximum participation. 


Equipment Recap:
1. Play balls (for a ball pit)
2. Beep kickball and APH Sound source (if needed)
3. Two scooter boards hooked together per team
4. Floor tape (we made our "game box" with tactual lines--rope with floor tape over rope).
5. Medium size laundry baskets. We bought ours from Walmart for a couple of bucks each.
6. Goalball goggles for each 'hippo'

At first we were concerned about collisions but we got pretty lucky with almost none. We had plenty of referees on watch that helped coach and ensured that each team did just one 'trap' per person. We had a variety of ages and visual abilities (including students who were deafblind) play. It was SO fun! It has definitely been added to our fave games list. I can't wait to play again!!

*Just in case you were wondering, the girls won the game!!

1 comment :

  1. I am a former camp councellor for Blind youth in Canada and this looks like SUCH A GREAT IDEA for that! Definitely suggesting it for the camp this year!! Thanks for sharing the activity AND the accessible-version!

    ReplyDelete