What an incredible fun we had yesterday. Our much-anticipated “Nursery Gladiators” obstacle course came to life! It was a fantastic collaboration between child-led inspiration and supportive adult planning.
The idea was sparked when one of our pupils shared: “I have an idea, why don’t we do, nursery gladiators?”.
This pupil stepped up as our course designer! Realising the Ambition reminds us that some of the most effective learning is a co-operative process between children and adults, where the lead passes back and forth. By taking the pupil’s initial spark and using our adult input to help them plan, build, and extend the ideas, we created a rich learning experience that supports everyone to grow emotionally, socially, physically and cognitively.
Warm-Up
Before tackling the main event, the children joined in with a great warm up, which was inspired and designed by one of our pupils.
They split into two teams to practice throwing and catching balls of different shapes and sizes – a brilliant way to develop hand-eye coordination. This was followed by a highly energetic game of ‘Traffic Lights’. Not only was this incredibly fun, but running forwards and backwards and stopping quickly on the ‘red light’ is actually a key developmental milestone for agility and spatial awareness!
Gladiators in Action
Then it was time for the main event. It was great to see the children navigate the physically challenges we had mapped out, practicing a variety of gross motor skills:
- Balance and Landing: Pupils started by balancing along the bench, choose to either step off or challenge themselves by jumping off the end to practice landing safely on two feet.
- Crab Scuttling: They then practiced their balancing by using the painted court lines to ‘scuttle lik’ a crab’, before skipping carefully over different footprints.
- Soft Play Climbing & Tunnels: Moving on, wir Gladiators climbed the steps, crawled carefully over the bridge, and went down the slight. Next, it was time to crouch, crawl and slide their way through the tunnel.
- Personal Challenge: Pupils ran across to the hurdles, and showed great independence by choosing which height of hurdle they wanted to be challenged by before jumping or stepping over them.
- The Gymnastics Horse: The grand finale involved coming over to the shorted gymnastics horse and jumping off onto the crash mat.
When pupils reached the gynmastics horse, they were supported and encouraged by staff to conduct their own peerie risk assessments; making sure they were taking individual turns to climb up and jump safely onto the crash mat. This could be a bit tricky sometimes, but with teamwork and patience, we did it. Involving children in assessing the risks and benefits of their play is a vital part of teaching them how to take responsibility for their own safety.
Finally, they hopped and tip-toed their way through a path of hoops.
A huge well done to all of our Nursery Gladiators (and our brilliant pupil designer) for their teamwork, resilience, and boundless energy yesterday morning!
