Matariki Inquiry sharing

On Friday we shared the work we did for inquiry with Ngaio.  They were so impressed!

Ball free days

We had some really interesting discussion about ball-free days in Karaka (days of the week where balls are not allowed in the playground.)  At the moment balls are banned in the playground at lunchtime and morning tea on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  This came about because of concern about the style of play that often dominates the turf is not necessarily how all children want to use our playground.  The playground at Clyde Quay is very small so it's important that we work out how we can ensure it is safe, fun and fair for everyone.  Through this trial process we hope that we'll be able to find some ways around these issues.

Here's what our Karaka kids had to say:

There were lots of suggestions for slight modifications to ball free days including:

• Slightly more or fewer ball free days
• Turf to be split into different zones (eg. ball zone and non ball zone)
• Top turf is non ball / chill out, Bottom block turf is for ball games

Some children believe that balls are the main source of fun at the school so we should always be allowed to play with them

Some children thought that the main issue was balls that are kicked.  So possible solutions are:  

• Get tough on head high kicks - only kicking below the waist - otherwise you are banned from the turf for a period of time.
• Days where you can use the balls but no kicking (ie. no soccer and no kicking in other sports)
• Another suggestion was that the turf could be a ball free area for two days a week, but balls are allowed in other parts of the playground.

A lot of children expressed discontent about how things were before ball free days, or support of ball free days:

• With no balls we’ve been able to use the astro turf more - for example playing running games or doing gymnastics or looking at the clouds
• Sometimes when children play and there’s balls around they get hit by balls.  This happens even when they're playing on the neptune and the tree house.
• Some children who don’t normally play soccer on the turf would like to have a chance to play without getting hit by bigger / more confident children’s balls or be involved in the roughness / competitiveness of their play.

Other suggestions not to do with ball free days were:

• More organised games - eg. from 12.40 there’s a game that goes for ten minutes
• More equipment into the playground so that there are more options for play
• More turf (eg. next to tree house) which can be used as a chill out zone