How did I never see how great this is for kids til now, I must’ve been distracted by a bumblebee…
So Rockstar says he does a lot of this in PE (besides what they have in PMP and a detailed Games/Swimming etc schedule depending on whether it’s hot or cold weather) and I got to see it last year when I subbed for another volunteering mum, but I didn’t realize how important it was until I read the PE section in the weekly Kennedy Newsletter.
Now, previously Rockstar has come home quite often talking about speedstacking, and I just filed that away as those……. Cups. And that……. Manic Thing I saw his class do last year in PE with freakish discipline and precision. (Seriously ok, all these little kids put their hands on the mat. Then they do this insane looking thing with cups – which btw I tried and like the grownups flailing about in the Youtube I embedded at bottom of this post, after awhile I just want to freaking fling cups everywhere – and a few seconds later their hands are back on the mat again.)
So anyway there was a note in the newsletter about how these cups were now available for Christmas delivery and there were links about all the “befefits” (good points. Forgive the site in the link the jarring typo) for kids, in doing this… Thing. As in:
“…Sport stacking not only promotes physical fitness, but also academic learning. Students that sport stack on a regular basis have shown increases in test scores and levels of concentration. This is achieved by students using both their right and left sides of their brain. When students sport stack they are crossing the “midline” of their bodies and developing new connections in their brains. These new connections help to spur brain growth which in turn promotes greater academic achievement…”
Heck, the Miss loves stacking blocks so much I was going to get them for her as well anyway (for Rockstar it was pretty much a foregone conclusion :D), but when I read the thing about all the benefits for coordination and etc I hopped over to the PTA school uniform shop where they were taking orders to pick some up.
So:
Predictably, this also happened below (she’s not “sport stacking” though, just stacking anything – which obviously sparked an argument with Mr Anal Retentive Armed With Sport Stacking Manual and her pointing him back to his OWN cups to do whatever he wants with his :D):
And so she did……. This. Her brother has long since given up, which is why Camel and Horsie are in attendance.
So… D’you think Rockstar slunk off defeated and left his baby sister to the animals? He’s been non-stop with those cups, so yeah, I did. I thought he went back to playing with his own cups and then forgot about it.
But no. This morning I discovered he’d left this for his sister to see on her art easel:
Don’t know whether this is “determined” or “passive-aggresssive” 😀
Anyway here’s a fun action video because you just have to see this thing for real. There’s an item in the “befefits” (sorry) about how it raises self esteem of little kids because it levels the playing field – anyone can be good at this, with a little practice (there’s even a split second in the video where I think one of the categories appears to be Special Needs – anyway I found this about Hong Kong’s first Special Needs sport stacking tournament in 2011) but really it was the “If you stack cups efficiently you might win a nice trophy. Of a cup,“ remark that made me pick this one.
