We asked our friend Kelly, a P.E Teacher from Victoria, to share a few games to play with the HART Bean Bag Mat Combo Kit. These bean bag games aim to develop Fundamental Motor Skills, subitising skills & confidence skills in primary school students. If you’re a teacher looking for game ideas to include into your classes, this is for you!
As a former generalist primary teacher, literacy coach and intervention teacher, it’s hard not to bring literacy and numeracy into my P.E lessons.
When I saw the vibrant and colourful HART Bean Bag Mat Combo Kit on HART Sport's Instagram account, I knew I had to have it! With its big vibrant shapes and numbers and corresponding number, colour and shape bean bag sets, I knew it would be a hit with my foundation and grade 1/2 students. The ideas for integrating literacy and numeracy skills into my classes started flowing.
The kit arrived just before the school holidays, and I was busting to use it. However, I finally got to use it with my foundation class when school returned. It was in the middle of the Big Shed (that's our indoor P.E space) and still wrapped up. As soon as the students saw it, they were all drawn to it! No putting down their jumpers or drink bottles, no sitting on the floor for the class roll. It was straight to the big, bright, multi-coloured mat. They were standing on it, jumping on it, sitting on it and rolling on it. There's always one (or three) that has to roll around on it!
I run 4 or 5 rotational activities in my foundation classes, focusing on one or two Fundamental Motor Skills (FMS). So far, I've used the HART Bean Bag Mat Combo Kit for teaching jumping and underarm throwing. The kit is perfect for teaching underarm throwing, although overarm would also work.
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ACTIVITY ONE:
I ask my students to choose a number on the HART Bean Bag Mat as their target. This task is differentiated based on their ability and confidence. I then ask the students to select a numbered bean bag that lay face down on the ground. They are asked to choose a bean bag, flip the bean bag, and read the number printed on the bean bag to the teacher. This exercise is to help young students gain confidence with subitising and trusting their counting skills.
Then using a green HART Marking Disc as the starting point, students practised looking at the number on the bean bag, pointing at the number on the mat, then take a step forward and swing their arm to release the bean bag and aim to hit their target. Then they get to jump on the numbers, calling out the numbers as they went to collect their bean bag from the mat.
An extension of this exercise could be, if they land their bean bag on their chosen target, they could then go and write their number on the board, getting some handwriting practise in as well. Or, for a fine motor skills extension, they could thread that many beads on a string each time and count them out each time as they add more.
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ACTIVITY TWO:
Another activity I have tried, utilises four different sized buckets as a target. I place the HART Shape Bean Bags in front of each target and then have my students throw a matching shaped bean bag into each corresponding bucket. You can also switch this up by drawing the shape of the bean bag with chalk on a wall and ask the students to use them as targets to throw at.
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ACTIVITY MORE!
The beauty of the HART Bean Bag Combo Kit is that it's not just P.E teachers that can use it; any classroom teacher could! It is a great resource to bring physical activity into literacy and numeracy classes, and for some students, they learn best kinaesthetically. When students have forgotten a skill, it's always great to say, 'remember that time we were using the colourful number mat and bean bags, and you had to ….'
Here are some more ideas to use the HART Bean Bag Combo Kit in your classroom. I'm sure you and your students will come up with a heap more.
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Make a set of exercise cards that have corresponding colours to the HART Coloured Bean Bags. Students choose a bean bag, throw it on the mat, then whatever number it lands on is the number of exercises they have to complete.
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Using the Numbered Bean Bags, students throw them onto the mat, and whatever number they land on, they have to add or multiply it to the number on the bean bag (according to the year level). Subtraction would even work. Students would need to work out the largest number and subtract the smallest.
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Throwing a Shape or Coloured Bean bag on to the mat, students then find that number of things in the same shape or colour. You could also do this if you had the HART Alphabet Bean Bag Set. Students would need to find things starting with that letter.
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The HART Bean Bag Gym Mat could be used for hopscotch, students saying the numbers as they jump or hop on them.
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Feeling inspired? Learn more about the HART Bean Bag Combo Kit and what it includes today!