Lesson video

Hi, it's Mr. Roberts again, and this is lesson two of the year three Outdoor and Adventures Activities unit as part of the year three PE unit.

And the lesson today is called the pillowcase challenge.

And this is a interesting game, which is going to test you with regard to maybe getting you to solve some problems and to get you to communicate with a partner.

So get yourselves ready and good luck.

Right, so like all PE lessons, we need to have some equipment.

And we've got four categories of equipment that we need to have in today's lesson.

The first thing is we need to have 16 unique objects.

And as you can see on the screen, I've given you some ideas of the sorts of things you can go out and collect.

But the key thing is you've got to have 16 things and they must all be different.

So you can't have two of anything.

And as you can see on my list, you've got a range of things from a ball to a button to a paperclip.

You've got a spoon.

You've got some toys.

You've got all sorts.

So that's 16 items. And they've got to be fairly small because they've got to fit inside a pillowcase.

And I'll explain all that later in the lesson.

You need to have some paper.

And I've suggested that you need to have several sheets of paper.

And you need to have some scissors.

Now when we're using scissors and when we're cutting, you must have an adult with you to supervise you and to help you.

And you need to have a pillowcase.

And I've actually put two pillowcases on because we might have an opportunity to use two pillowcases in this lesson.

So they're the items you need.

16 unique items. They must be small.

You must be able to hold them in one hand.

And you must have some paper.

You must have some scissors.

And you must have two pillowcases.

Pause the video, go and find all those items. And when you've got them, please come back and get ready for the next part of the lesson.

Okay, in all of our PE lessons, we need to learn some key words or what we call the vocabulary.

And I've got two key phrases that I want you to remember from today's lesson.

The first one is what you're really going to be working on, and that's your fine motor skills.

And that's being able to use the movements of your fingers and your thumbs and your hands to feel things, and to sense things, and to recognise things, and to manipulate things, and move things around just using the muscles of your hands, your fingers, and your thumbs.

And the second keyword is communication.

And that is where you can give information to someone and you can take information from someone.

Okay? So they are our keywords in today's lesson.

Okay, so we're ready to get on with this activity.

And I'm going to talk you through very slowly and I'm going to explain as clear as I can what you have to do.

So the first thing you must do is you get your 16 items. And for every item, you're going to write the name of that onto a sheet of paper.

The way we're going to do is we get one sheet of paper and we must cut it into 16 equal sized pieces.

So that's where we need to get an adult to help us with our cutting using the scissors.

So for example, I have got a piece of LEGO, and I have written LEGO onto my sheet of paper, okay? So that's one.

I've got hairbrush written down because I've got a hairbrush.

So I've got 16 items and 16 pieces of paper, and you must write down the names of those items onto a piece of paper.

Once you've done that, you must put them into a pillowcase.

And I've got my pillowcase already, okay? So I've got my hairbrush.

I must put it into the pillowcase.

I've got my piece of LEGO.

I put it into the pillowcase.

In my case, I found myself a golf ball.

I put it into the pillowcase.

And I keep going until I've got all of my items and I've put them in.

So I've got all sorts of varying sizes and varying textures.

So I've got big items. I've got little items, such as a marble.

I've got even a small toy dinosaur with all sorts of strange textures and pointy bits on it.

So I've got all sorts of things that go into my pillowcase.

Now it's really important from a safety point of view, you must not have anything that's sharp in there.

So please do not put anything which is, so for example, a knife.

Please do not put a knife in there.

Please do not use a safety pin or a drawing pin.

It must be things which are not sharp.

So you put all of your 16 items into a pillowcase and you must make sure that every item has its own piece of paper.

So I have a paperclip, and there's my paperclip piece of paper.

So pause the video, go and put all of your items in the pillowcase, but make sure that you've written down every item onto its own little piece of paper, okay? Come back when you've done that.

Okay, so you've got your 16 pieces of paper.

The next thing you must do is you must turn all of those pieces of paper over and put them onto the table so you can't actually see what is written on the sheet of paper, okay? And as you can see it on the photograph which is now showing on the screen, that's exactly how I've done it.

But what I've done just to show you what I mean, I've left two the right way up, and I'll turn those over in a minute.

So in the top left-hand corner, it says paperclip.

And then there's another one underneath which says LEGO.

So once the game starts, I will make sure they're turned over as well.

So you must have your 16 sheets of paper, all in a big square, and they're all the wrong way up, so they're blank.

And the way the activity works, you can work on your own to start off with, and you're going to take a piece of paper.

And so for example, I will turn my piece of paper over now, and I've got hairbrush.

So what I must now do is I must go into my pillowcase like that, and I must reach around, and using one hand, I'm not allowed to look until I can feel, and I certainly found the hairbrush, okay? That's the challenge.

I put that to one side.

I then take the next piece of paper.

And the next piece of paper, let's see what I've got.

And it says, LEGO.

So I will now put my hand into the pillowcase, and I'll reach around, and that doesn't feel like a LEGO.

That feels like a golf ball.

Mm, what's that one? Mm, that's a dinosaur.

I don't want a dinosaur.

There it is.

There's a piece of LEGO, okay? And what I must do is I keep going until I've done all 16 pieces of paper.

So I'm only allowed to use one hand.

The other hand is holding the pillow case.

And I will use my hands, and this is the fine motor skills.

I'm feeling, and I'm using my fingers and my thumbs to feel and get used to what the sensation of those items is, okay? So what I'd like you to do is pause the video, and go and see how long it takes you to find all 16 items just using the sense of touch.

Have a go, and then put all the items back in the bag, in the pillowcase, turn the piece of paper over, and have another go.

And when you've done it three times, come back to the video and I'm going to give you some ideas on how we can make this more interesting and how we can involve someone else and we can get our communication skills involved in our activity, okay? So pause the video, go and have a go, and come back when you're ready.

Excellent.

How did you get on? So that's quite an interesting game, isn't it? And it must be quite frustrating at times because I find it quite frustrating that I can't look into the pillowcase to see what I'm looking for.

So I have to rely on touch and my fine motor skills which is what I described to you at the start of the lesson.

So I'm using my fingers and my thumbs and the muscles of my hands to feel and sense the textures of what I'm looking for until I find what it is.

Now we can make this a little bit more interesting or a little more challenging.

So we've got to put some variations on this activity.

The first way you could change it is maybe as you're doing it, you have to describe your partner what you can feel.

And this is quite useful because I said to you at the start one of my key words is communication.

You need to be able to describe what's around you, you must be able to describe your environment, and you must be able to describe things close to you as well.

So I put my hand into the pillowcase and I'm looking, for example, the golf ball is what I'm looking for, but I'm describing, okay, that's strange.

That's something soft and that's squishy, okay? That's not a golf ball, okay? That's also soft.

That's hard.

That's sharp.

Mm, that feels like a ruler.

That's not what I want.

There it is.

I found the golf ball.

It's a hard ball.

It's got a pimply surface.

Yep, that's definitely the golf ball, and I found it.

So I described to my partner what I'm looking for.

So the next thing you could do is you could take turns.

So you've got your 16 sheets of paper, all the wrong way up.

So we have eight goes each and we have a competition.

So my partner turns it over.

He or she finds out that they've got to look for, for example, a piece of LEGO, and off they go.

They try and find the piece of Lego.

When they find it, you take that sheet of paper away.

And then my go, and there's now only 15 items. And we keep going until there's nothing left in the pillowcase.

The third way we could do, this is using our weaker hand because it's really important now that we actually have two hands almost as good as each other.

So I'm right-handed, but actually, I'm going to try it with my left hand and see how that is.

And I'm still going to describe what I'm looking for, but I'd be interested to know whether you find it as easy with your weaker hand as with your more dominant hand.

And the last way you could vary this is to maybe have two pillow cases with identical items in it.

So you found 16 items. Maybe if you're lucky enough, you had 16 items times two.

And every item in pillowcase one is replicated or is the same in pillowcase two.

So we can make a competition.

So my partner and I, one of us will turn the sheets of paper over, and it says, for example, hairbrush, and it's a competition to see who can find that hairbrush first of all.

And we keep going until we've got nothing left in our two pillowcases.

So there's four variations on that pillowcase challenge.

What I would like you to do is pause the video, and go and have a play.

See how you get on.

Try all four variations, and come back when you're ready.

So you've got plenty of time.

Try each one two or three times.

And when you're ready, come back to the video, and we can discuss how you've got on.

Well done, and good luck.

Excellent stuff.

How did you get on? I think I found that really interesting to finding that some things were really much harder to feel and much harder to recognise than others.

So when I was looking in my pillowcase or feeling into my pillowcase, it was easy to find the piece of LEGO because it's got a really interesting, very rough surface and a smooth surface.

But there's other things which it was harder to find.

So for example, I found I was looking for a marble, but I pulled out a pebble.

Strange.

Similar texture but different size and different weight.

So how did you get on? Did you find that some items were much more difficult to recognise than others? Did you find it easy describing what you're looking for? Did you have the right words? Okay? So well done.

An interesting activity, but it gets you thinking, okay? So pause the video, have a break, and I look forward to seeing you in the next lesson.

Well done, everybody.