Hand-Eye Coordination: The Cone Tree

Game 1: Cone Tree

1. Put up a ladder, the Christmas tree, at a wall to keep it from falling down if it is light or use chairs, tables, or boxes instead and stack them up to be able to place cones, the Christmas presents, on each level. 
2. Stairs work really well too.
3. Children now try to shoot all the cones off the ladder from behind a predefined shooting line
4. Lay out some hoops to shoot from.
5. Each cone represents one Christmas present, let's see who gets the most presents?

Tips

1. Use small boxes instead of cones that resemble presents more closely.
2. If you don’t have a ladder handy, put up the cones on stairs, one cone per step.
   
3. The key is to use small enough cones or have the shooting line far enough away to force a full throwing motion and challenge children for quite a while to get all cones down.
4. It tends to be very motivating for children to shoot all the cones down so it should not be too easy.
5. Try at least 1 round with your non-preferred hand as well.

Goals

Main focus: Hand-Eye coordination with the throwing, specifically, children need to find the right balance between enough power for their throw as well as control to be able to shoot down the cone.
In addition: Physicality, having to go and pick up the balls again and again.

Story

1. The Christmas tree is full of presents and in order to get a present, children need to shoot them down.
   

Progressions

1. The smaller the cones,
2. the further they shoot from or
3. throwing with your non-preferred hand is how you increase the challenge.