Sharks and Minnows

I've learned with kids under the age of 8 you can't go wrong with pirates, (the kind with parrots on their shoulders, not the Somali kind.) This week I turned my pirate party I had in June (see June 2010) into an after school activity aimed at elementary aged. I did not have a pirate storyteller but instead included several pirate/aquatic-themed games.

One game we played was the classic "Sharks and Minnows." In this game one child is chosen as a shark and stands in the center of the room. The rest of the children are minnows and must cross to the other side of the room without being tagged by the shark. If the shark tags a minnow, that minnow becomes a shark. You play until there is one lone minnow left. I have a fairly large auditorium so I thought this game would be fun. We had about a dozen kids playing, ranging from 4-10.

Things were going fun until there were two minnows left, one tiny girl that can't have been older than five and one boy not much older than that. They were faced by ten exciting, shouting, and eager sharks. When I said "go" for the minnows to cross over to the other side, it was kind of like those nature shows where hyenas descend on a gazelle. Ten older kids jumped on these two little kids, saying "we got you", pushing them and herding them to the other side of the room. I was fearful one of them got hurt since the older kids were so excited. Fortunately no one was but I decided we were done with "Sharks and Minnows." After that we stuck to a game like Hot Potato, where it was less likely one could get run over.

Pick up the Buckets!

In some anime school dramas when a character misbehaves in school they are forced to hold up water filled buckets as punishment. Up until the 1970s teachers in Japan would discipline their students this way and it made its way into popular culture. The water bucket punishment is the equivalent to the "dunce cap" in Western cartoons.

I had my first anime club meeting this week and since my anime teens are very loud and crazy I thought a way to discipline them would be to use the bucket punishment. I brought two small buckets and filled them up with water and informed them (in a kindly manner) all at the beginning if there was misbehavior someone would have to hold the buckets. The teens thought this was very funny and immediately started competing to hold the buckets. Soon however, the girls found out the buckets were very tiring to hold and stopped but a couple of boys kept at it presumably to impress the ladies.

I only ended up using the buckets as punishment once when a girl did not get off our auditoriums piano... a big no no. I told her "pick up the buckets!" Then all the other teens picked up the chorus: "pick up the buckets!" She dutifully complied. I don't know if the water buckets had the intended effect I was looking for but they did provide some amusement.