Summer comes early as Tennis is the main sport this week

It was great to be back after half term and with the weather feeling more like spring than winter we had our first session of tennis of the year.
The day started, as always, with a warm up led by Ray and Ollie - this involved a game of What's the time Mr Wolf and another tag game.
Then it was out with the tennis rackets and balls and first up each child had to practice balancing the ball on the racket as they moved around the hall. This then progressed to bouncing the ball on the racket as they moved. Lastly they then switched to hitting the ball downwards so bouncing the ball between racket and floor as they moved

we then went on to play a traffic lights game led by Ollie. When Ollie held the red cone aloft it meant stand still and balance your ball on your racket. Yellow cone meant bounce the ball on the racket whilst standing still but a green cone meant go and that meant bouncing the ball whilst on the move around the hall.
Next up was a Slalom course. Ray and the team laid out lanes up the length of the hall. They kids then had to go along the course going around the cones. To start with it was just balancing the ball as they moved but then it got trickier as they were then asked to bounce the ball on the racket whilst on the move

After a drinks break the fun continued with a game called "Build a Burger". This is where small groups work together to balance tennis balls between rackets as they move up and down the hall. As they complete a lap another person joins the group and adds another layer to the burger. So what starts as a tennis ball between two rackets then has another ball added on top with another racket holding that in place. As the layers build up it becomes harder to keep the whole stack stable and soon the whole lot can fall apart if you are not careful

The tennis games concluded with some general games across the nets and then a game of King of the Court. Ollie led the game throwing the ball over the net to each player in turn. They had to hit the ball back over the net and get it to bounce inside the court without getting caught out. Get caught or fail to get the ball back over and in to the court then you were out and you joined Ollie in trying to catch the others out. The last player remaining was the King, or Queen, of the court. This is a great game as it gets progressively harder to survive as the number of fielders grow throughout the game as more people are out.
After a final break most of the younger kids went to the ball pool whilst the remainder played some Benchball, as you can see in the photos below.​

Our star of the week this week was Callum who worked really hard throughout the session and impressed on the coaches and volunteers. Well done Callum!

Next week  the session is based around the sport of Basketball so join us again at 10am on Saturday for some "hoops"

Callum, our star this week, with his certificate and pictured with Anand (who loves a photo) and assistant coach Kate