Rabbit Robbers

Purpose: To improve dribbling/ball control skills with hands and feet

Suggested Age: K-4

Equipment: 4 hula hoops, lots beanbags, 1 ball for each student to dribble

Game Objective: the objective of the game is to collect as many vegetables from the garden as possible during the allotted time and return them to your rabbit hole. Students can collect vegetables by dribbling to the center circle, grabbing a vegetable, and dribbling back to their base without having a farmer steal their ball

Set Up:

• Place as many beanbags (vegetables) as possible within the center circle of the gym. This area is the garden
• Break up students into 4 different teams and sent to each corner of the gym where there will be hula hoops.
• If possible, have each team wear different colored pinnies that match their hula hoop. These students are considered rabbits
• Each team must select 2 students to send to the perimeter of the garden. These students are considered farmers
• Give each rabbit a ball to dribble, but no the farmers

Rules:

When the music starts the rabbits must attempt to dribble their ball into the garden without having their ball taken by an opposing teams farmer. If they make it into the garden they may stop dribbling and grab a vegetable. Once they have a vegetable they must then attempt to dribble out of the garden and drop it back in their rabbit hole. If however they get their ball taken by a farmer they then become a farmer and the student that stole their ball is now a rabbit.

Students are not allowed to steal their ball directly back from the same student but must go to a new student from an opposing team. Farmers are not allowed to go into the garden. Students are NEVER allowed to take from another teams rabbit hole, but must take only from the garden and only one at a time.

Once the song is over (or all of the vegetables have been collected), have the students go back to their rabbit hole and count up their totals to see who has the most. Once all of the vegetables have been counted bring them all back to the garden and prepare to begin a new game. When selecting new farmers for the next game, the team that had the highest score must now have 3 students start as farmers and the team with the lowest score starts with only 1 farmer.

Tips:

To increase the math element to the game, once the song ends but before the counting phase you may announce that a certain vegetable (ex: orange = carrot, green = lettuce) is worth double and that a different vegetable is actually rotten and don't count.

This game can be played to work on developing either hand dribbling skills or foot dribbling skills. If working on hand dribbling, K-2 I have my students use a playground ball and my 3-4 students use a basketball. If working on foot dribbling I have all of them use soccer balls.

When hand dribbling with Kindergarten, instead of having students dribble to the garden have them dribble 5x in place at their rabbit hole and then attempt to run with their ball to garden. If tagged they must hand that student their ball before becoming a farmer