As you can see in the photos above this included dribbling the ball across the court; working in pairs, moving the ball around the waist to your partner and then passing over the head and between the legs. All of this is designed  to help improve ball control and flexibility.
Next up were some dribbling races up and down the hall around the cones. This meant bouncing the ball on the move keeping good control balancing speed with ball handling. Then to make it harder they introduced some of the ball control routines mid-race by making the kids stop at the far end and move the ball around their waste before carrying on.​

After a break it was on to the fun part - shooting.  The kids took it in turn to take shots and as the photos below show there is some great shooting and fantastic accuracy.
The session ended by putting all the things they had practiced together in a final game.
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This week's session started with Alan and Ollie leading some warm up games including a traffic light game. It was quite sunny out so making use of the playground while we can it was jogging around on a green light, stop on  a red light and a series of warm up exercises when the light was amber. These ranged from star jumps to moving side to side.
We were pleased to welcome a new volunteer to the team this week in Phoebe, who is a student at Davenant school and is doing her Duke of Edinburgh Bronze award. She will be volunteering with us for a while and her assistance is most welcome.
With the main sport of Handball in mind, Alan and the team split the group in to pairs or threes and with a ball per group got them throwing the ball to each other. They varied between underarm throws and over the head. If throwing with the ball in both hands above the head then it would be a bounce pass with the ball bouncing mid-way between thrower and catcher. These exercises were aimed at honing the members throwing and catching skills.

Next up was some targeted throwing with the kids aiming to knock a tennis ball off a cone. The cone was placed midway between the two players with a tennis ball on top. Using the big soft balls the players then had to throw their ball down with the aim of hitting the tennis ball on the cone. The kids did really well with tennis balls flying off in all directions!
Alan then moved on to a Handball shooting routine. Cones were laid out to form three lanes with a goal by the fence at the end of each. We had three volunteer goalkeepers in Umar, Kerrie and Callum. The rest formed three queues to take it in turns to bounce the ball up the course before stopping at a set point and by doing a bounce pass trying to shoot past the keeper in to the goal

The fun then moved indoors for some quick games of handball. The group split in to three teams and we used benches for goals. The kids then used the skills they had practised to do bounce passes to each other and to move the ball up the pitch before shooting for the goal.  Even Umar got in on the action using his wheelchair. He is fast and impossible to tackle and Alan helped him shoot the ball at the goal.

After a break for snacks and refreshments we finished off the session with some games of Boccia and then some putting. The putting game involved hitting off of little markers and aiming to hit little cones. If you hit the cone you  kept it. The game was over when all the cones had been hit and the person with the most cones was declared the winner​

As the weather took a turn for the worse this Saturday we made full use of Oak View School's facilities by playing badminton in the school hall. 
We started as always with a warm up led by Ray. As you can see below this started with some stretching exercises followed by some games of tag, finishing off with a game of "Who's afraid of Mister Wolf?".
With the badminton we started with the  members getting used to hitting a shuttlecock up in the air and trying to keep that going for as long as possible. We then moved on to hitting across the nets to a partner on the other side.  There were some great rallies and the kids showed a high level of skill.

After the break Ray led the group in some games based around basic ball handling. The kids formed a circle and Ray led the gang  in a series of activities in what proved to be a chilled and relaxed but fun part of the session
To finish the session Ray got the Parachute out of the store room and the gang each grabbed one of the handles. They started off by trying to raise and drop the parachute in unison  and then to get a good wave motion going. Some of the little ones couldn't resist getting underneath it as it rose and fell. To finish off a ball was thrown on to the parachute with the idea being to move the ball around from side to side without the ball falling off the side. it made for a fun end to the session with lots of laughter and excitement.