Balance: Poisonous Mushroom Hunt

Challenge 1: Poisonous Mushroom Hunt

1. Each child gets a small bucket to collect mushrooms.
2. Before getting started, have children spread out single pieces of toilet papers all over the gym, which are the poisonous white mushrooms.
3. Because the mushrooms are so poisonous, children can only pick them up with their feet to keep them far away from their faces.
4. They are then however allowed to use the help of their hands to put them into the bucket.
5. Do one round picking up the mushrooms with your left feet only, then one round with your right foot only.

Tips

1. You can try the same challenge with a variety of different items, like bottle lids, cloth pegs, little stones, buttons.
2. Ideally, have children pick up an equal amount with both left and right leg, even though this is hard to monitor.
    

Goals

Main focus: Balance
In addition: Physicality, strength in particular as children will spend a lot of time on one leg.

Story

1. These mushrooms are very poisonous and children need to be super careful not to get them in their mouth, which is why they pick them up using their feet.
    

Progressions

1. The more pieces children have to pick up,
2. the smaller the items or
3. picking them up with their non-preferred foot is how you increase the challenge.