It was great to be back after the Half Term break and to welcome back our head coach Alan, who has been on a coaching course for the last few weeks. The weather outside was miserable so it was good to be a nice, warm school hall having fun!
We started as always with some warm ups and tag games to get everyone's muscles stretched and to get the blood pumping, so to speak. One of these you can see in the first few photos where Ollie held up a coloured cone and the kids had to run to corner of the hall that had the same coloured cone.

The first main sport of the day was Archery, which the kids love. Now that Coach Alan was back we had someone who knew how to put up the targets, which is always a help! The kids took it in turns to have a go trying to get a bullseye. Once again they showed a great aptitude for the sport with several getting really good scores.

We played Archery right the way up to the main break but we finished the session with some games of Curling and Putting. For the curling the group split in to a blue team and a red team with the aim to be the team with a stone closest to the yellow dot on the centre of  the school hall. The red team won the first game but as you can see in the photos below the blue team got extremely close during the second game. We then finished off with some golf - putting at cones. If you hit a cone with your ball then you collect it. The player with the most cones at the end of the game is the winner.

In our last session as we head in to the half term break we kept active and played a variety of games that were a lot of fun!
To get the kids warmed up we played some running games. This included a game where four coloured cones were placed in the corners of the hall and depending on the colour called the kids had to run to that corner. That was followed by some games of What's the Time Mr Wolf? - a club favourite. 

Ray and Ollie then got the big multi-coloured parachute out and played a series of games. The first one had the kids running around the outside of the parachute, one at a time,  and back to their starting positions as quickly as they could. The winner being the one to do it in the quickest time. Then there was a game involving balancing a ball on the parachute as it was floated up and down. They did Mexican waves with the parachute and a game where kids ran from one side to the other under the parachute. The last game was called Shark Attack and came from one of the kids - Daisy. It involved the kids sitting on the floor with the parachute low down. Daisy was the shark under the parachute and tried to grab the other kids feet as she moved around. The kids had to try and avoid being captured.

After a quick drinks break the kids then played a couple of games of Rob The Nest. The group were split in to four teams, each with a hoop (nest) in one corner of the hall. To start with they all took it in turns to collect a ball or cone from the two hoops in the middle. Once they were all gone the madness  started as the kids robbed balls and cones from the others nest. The aim being to have the most balls and cones in your nest so you had to collect more then were robbed from your own nest.

After the main break we were planning on playing some Archery but we had some technical difficulties with the equipment so we finished the session off with some games of Boccia. As you can see in the photos below rather than both teams aim at the same white "Jack" ball they had coloured hoops instead with each team trying to get their coloured balls in to the hoop of the same colour.

On the same day the GB Hockey teams were doing well against New Zealand (the men's team drew but the women's team won), we played the same sport here at Epping Forest Sportability.
The session started, as always, with a warm up made up of some stretching and jogging around the hall, followed by some tag games such as What's the Time Mr Wolf?
Once all the kids were suitably warmed up it was out with the tennis balls and hockey sticks. They started off with some ball control - dribbling their tennis balls around the hall. Then it was on to working in pairs, across the hall from each other, and passing a ball back and forth between each other. 

From passing in pairs the group then moved on to passing up and down the hall. Each child would stand by a cone that were laid out in a zig-zag up the hall. The kids would then pass the ball from one to the next up the hall and then back again.​

After a quick drinks break the coaches then laid out slalom courses up and down the hall so the kids could practice their close ball control, moving around cones as they made their way along the course. Once that was mastered the coaches added some shooting to the end of the course. Once the kids had made their way up the hall and back again around all the cones they then had to shoot and try and get the ball inside a hoop at the end of the course.

After the main break it was time to put all the practice in to good use with some one-on-one games initially and then on to full team games. For the one-on-one games the coaches picked players of a similar skill level and it was first to score past the goalie. Then the coaches made up two teams to complete in an end-of-session match.

In the week where the world mourned the passing of Basketball legend Kobe Bryant we got our own little legends practising the sport. You never know, we may have a future star in our midst!

The session started, as always, with some warm up stretches followed by some "tag" games such as "What's the time Mr Wolf?". Once warmed up it was out with the basketballs and to start with it was just walking around the hall bouncing / dribbling the ball. This was just to familiarize the kids with holding and controlling the ball. (Note: Apologies for the grainy photos above but the camera was on the wrong setting - it gets fixed by later on in the session)

The kids were then asked to move around a hoop on the floor whilst bouncing their ball within the hoop - a good way to practice ball control whilst moving side to side. The first part of the session then ended up with some traffic light games (stopping with the ball; bouncing on the spot or dribbling around the hall depending on the colour being held up).
After a quick drinks break the coaches took things up a notch by creating a slalom style course up the hall. As you  can see in the photos below there were three identical courses consisting of hoops and cones to go around and the kids then competed to see who could complete the course the quickest.

Ray and Kate then came up with some passing games, including one around and across a big circle as you can see in the photos below. Then came a drill involving bouncing and shooting. All this was then put in to practice with firstly some one on one games and then, after the main break, some team games. At the end of the main game it was Hal's team that were the winners.
You will also see in the some of the photos below that a few of the younger boys took a break from the basketball for a while to enjoy some fun in the school's Ball Pool. They had such a good time that one lad did not want to leave when it was time to go home!