Speed Stacking
They brought a cool young guy into our school a few weeks back to demonstrate the game/sport of Speed Stacking and it has now become the kids' most popular obsession. The new speed stacking club has attracted over a hundred students from Gr. 1 to 8, so many that the teacher supervisors have split the club up by division over three lunch hour practice sessions per week. I sat in on the first Gr. 3 and 4 session today.
If you are unfamiliar with Speed Stacking a few seconds of this video should give a quick idea of what's involved. You take a stack of nine or more specially-designed plastic cups and you are timed as you stack them in assorted piles and pyramids.
Our students have fallen in love with the activity and with 40 Gr. 3 and 4 students at the first session today I found I went quickly from observer to instructor, helping the teachers that are running things. We started with the simplest game today which is three pyramids with three cups in each pyramid. The trick to it all is that you have to learn early how to manipulate your hands together, depending if you're right or left-handed, to put the structure up and take it down as smoothly and quickly as possible. I found the biggest challenge today is that more kids were interested in being fast than being accurate. So they didn't appreciate it much when you insisted they slow down to learn the technique correctly first and then start building up speed. Still if they hope to make it to the area schools competition in May they gotta learn that technique, so that will be the challenge of the first few sessions.
And if I'm going to continue to help instructing I'm going to have to learn how to build some of those more complicated pyramids, too :). Our school is placing a group order on-line to let kids order their own cups and I'm going to buy a few sets, too, and then use them to practice!
If you are unfamiliar with Speed Stacking a few seconds of this video should give a quick idea of what's involved. You take a stack of nine or more specially-designed plastic cups and you are timed as you stack them in assorted piles and pyramids.
Our students have fallen in love with the activity and with 40 Gr. 3 and 4 students at the first session today I found I went quickly from observer to instructor, helping the teachers that are running things. We started with the simplest game today which is three pyramids with three cups in each pyramid. The trick to it all is that you have to learn early how to manipulate your hands together, depending if you're right or left-handed, to put the structure up and take it down as smoothly and quickly as possible. I found the biggest challenge today is that more kids were interested in being fast than being accurate. So they didn't appreciate it much when you insisted they slow down to learn the technique correctly first and then start building up speed. Still if they hope to make it to the area schools competition in May they gotta learn that technique, so that will be the challenge of the first few sessions.
And if I'm going to continue to help instructing I'm going to have to learn how to build some of those more complicated pyramids, too :). Our school is placing a group order on-line to let kids order their own cups and I'm going to buy a few sets, too, and then use them to practice!