Building understanding

Rounders / Baseball (Part 1)

Physical development

﻿Hi everyone, my name is Alistair and today we're going to play baseball. For this lesson you will need a softball, a tee tray, a baseball or rounders bat, and a tennis ball. If you haven't got these items you can substitute them with other things you have around your house and that's absolutely fine. Please press pause whilst you get things ready. Let's get ready! Find a quiet, clear space to work away from distractions. Ensure the area is safe and that your child is feeling fit and well to take part in the lesson. Check you are wearing the right clothes for sports and physical activity. I'd encourage your child to be as independent as possible with this. Make sure your resources are nearby and use a familiar reference to prepare the learner that the activity is about to start. This could be a symbol, a sound, or even a song. Press pause whilst you get things ready. It's time to look, listen, and learn. First, before we play baseball, we need to get our muscles ready for exercise. We're going to do some movement in different directions as we would in a baseball match today. So I have got my different points on the floor here. You can do this in really quite a small space in your house, in the kitchen or living room or out in the garden if you've got some outside space. I've put two cushions down. I've got a yellow spot made out of card which is nice and bright. and I have my orange square at the back made out of card. They're nice and bright resources and will really support visually impaired learners. The first thing I'm going to do is just to get myself active and get myself moving is have a walk around my space. So start to walk in different directions. You can say to your child, change direction. They might make experiments with different ways they can move. So they could move backwards, we could do some lower movements where we can walk about or we could crouch around. We can stretch up nice and high on our tiptoes. So experiment with that for several minutes, just to get your child moving and get their heart rate going. And then we're going to move on to the main part of our warmup today. And we are going to move in different directions. And when we play baseball, we have to touch the base. So we go around the baseball diamond and we have to touch the base. And that's what we're going to do with our warmup today. So to get myself in the middle, on my toes and ready, and then I'm going to touch the different bases. So I could almost time myself and make this quite competitive and all into a bit of a race. So I'm going to go around first, I'm going to touch the pink puff and then back to the middle. Touch the spot and back to the middle. Touch the grey cushion and back to the middle. And finally touch the orange box and come back to the middle. You could call out different stations for your child and build some anticipation with them so they could be ready on the spot. And you could call out orange square, go back and touch the square and back to the middle. And you could call out those different stations. So really build that anticipation, get that heart rate going so we're ready to play our baseball. If your child is a wheelchair user we can use a STEP Principle here. Just make sure you have your stations at higher points that's accessible to them and make sure you have enough space for them to manoeuvre their wheelchair. So I can feel my heart rate going. I think we are ready for baseball.

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Before we get started with our baseball session, a few safety points to run through to make sure that we've got a good, clear space, there's nobody behind us. And we always need to check, encourage your child to check that they've got good spaces, nobody near them or around them. And that will allow them to swing their bats freely when they practise that striking. It's really important we keep ourselves space. And also if you have any important objects around the house as well when you're doing this activity, make sure there's a really clear area to practise these skills. Now, when we think about baseball striking, it's a bit different. If you've seen our cricket sessions, we encourage to have our bats down and play the ball like that and strike from a lower place. Whereas in baseball, we strike far higher up. So we swing back and we strike the ball higher up. So it's an upright movement, as opposed to cricket when we were crouching down. Now I'm going to start to practise with a balloon first. And that's a really good starting point for us just so I can get used to swinging my bat freely and striking the ball there or the balloon in this case. I've got a small little rounders bat here. You could do this activity with a tee tray or anything else that you have around the house, a frying pan, as we use in some of our tennis lessons. Whatever works best for you in your environment. So I'm going to get my balloon. Your child can choose how they want to grip the bat. They might choose to have a one-handed grip like that, which is absolutely fine. They might choose to grip the bat tightly in two hands, and that might support a controlled movement for them. So maybe to start with, I would encourage that two handed grip whilst they're striking the balloon. Now to start with, we do this from a static position. Your child can throw the balloon up themself and then strike or you could feed the balloon in to them to practise. Now I'm on my own pace, I'm going to practise by throwing the balloon up and striking and to start off with, I would say don't swing back too far because the further back we swing, the more difficult it is to be accurate when we come and strike the balloons. A small swing back and a good strike and follow through onto the balloon. So the balloon goes up and a strike there. So that's a good practise. Your child might do that several times and then you might build up to using a sponge ball or a tennis ball depending on the space you're working in. So I've just got an old tee tray here and the same thing. So I can hold my tee tray and practise my striking. You don't have to have a baseball bat or a tennis racket. You can use everyday household items. So I'm going to put my sponge ball in the air and same thing, I'm going to throw it up and see if I can strike. I might swing back a touch further this time and see if I can add some more power to my shot. So up goes the ball and we strike there. So how about practise of those skills again, progress from the balloon onto the sponge ball. And then we'll start to apply our skills into a proper baseball match. Great work everyone.

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For the next part of our baseball session, we're going to practise our fielding skills. And we're going to practise some catching, some fielding on the floor, how we throw a ball at a target. Now, I've set up a little bit of a course here for me. I've got a bin that I'm going to use as a target later. And I've got some different markers where I'm going to throw my ball towards the target and the bin and see if I can be as accurate as I possibly can be. You can use a balloon for this activity. You can use a beach ball, you can use a tennis ball. I've covered a ball in some tinfoil here, and that might really motivate your child. It's a really nice sensory feel to that. The light bounces off it, it's nice and bright and shiny. So again, think if your child is visually impaired, this could be a great tactile and resource that they can use to support them here. So I'm going to practise my catching here. And I got to remember to keep my eye on the ball at all times. I'm going to have my hands up and then I'm going to bring the ball closely into my chest to have control and to keep it nice and tight there. So those three things the eye on the ball, I'm going to have my hands up, I'm going to always be ready to catch it, then I'm going to bring the ball closely into my chest to show some control. So you might practise that with your child. You could feed them the ball, or they could just stand on their own or sit on their own and practise that skill. So up the ball goes, hands up, and back into my chest. So always looking at the ball, up we go. Now to make that a bit more difficult, you could start to catch on the move so I could be walking, or you might can throw the ball to your child slightly to the side of them where they have to hands up and catch and bring the ball into my chest. So have a good practise of that skill there. The brilliant thing is across our physical development offer, we have some skills that you will see again and again. So that realisation from your child that I've done this somewhere else. I've practised this in rugby, I've done this in my target lesson and they'll really start to transfer their learning skills across, which is really exciting. So that's the first part of our fielding with catching. The second part is we think about how do we stop the ball from going past this? And I'd look at our cricket skills to really help us here. So we think about how we try and get our body in the way. It's important to have our hands ready, but we get our body in the way. So you may have seen our cricket lessons where we have a long barrier and we bring our knee down and we make quite a big surface area. So if the ball I miss with my hands, it hits my foot but it doesn't go past me. it could hit me in the knee there. So you can practise your long barrier by rolling the ball to your child. First of all straight at them, where they can go down and they can feel the ball. And then after maybe practise when they're on their own. If the balls going away from them I go, long barrier and I get the ball. So practise those skills. Static and then when you're moving is a really a good thing to do. The final skill I'm going to look at is aiming for a target. So I've got my three sets of markers here and I'm going to aim for my bin as a target. Now again, I can use my silver ball, I can use beach ball, or I can use my soft ball that I have here. And I can start off with the easiest one possible. So I come nice and close to the target. I'm almost on top of the target there, which is fine. And all I'm going to do is make sure my body's facing the right way and throw the ball at the target again. What we've done several times in our physical development offer the anticipation of going 1 2 3 at the target and that hit the target that time. Then I can make things a bit more difficult so I can come back to my pink cushion. So I'm thinking about throwing in a different direction now, so I have to move my body and aim at the target. I've got my pink softball or beach ball here. So aim at the target, your child might roll it, they might practise over arm. They can explore different ways in which they can throw at the target. Again 1 2 3 And that hit the target there so that was a good shot. And now back to my station here, I've got my cushion and going further away and I'm going to use my smallest soft ball for this. So again think about how I can throw it at the target. And I got to try over arm for this one. So a bit like our skills in cricket, I'm going to point and I'm going to throw at the target. So I make sure I'm facing the right way. I may hit my target here on our point. Oh, and I slightly missed that time. So I obviously need some more practise. Have them play around with that. Go move closer towards your target and move further away, a greater distance from your target. You could even introduce performing those skills whilst you are moving on the run. So you might be moving and then throw your ball at the target. You might catch the ball and then throw your ball at the target. So you're starting to sequence those movements and skills together. Have lots of fun playing baseball.

Pause the video to complete your task. To make this lesson easier, you could use large softballs and practise striking with your hand before progressing on to using a bat. You could practise striking from a static position, with a larger surface area as a bat. To make it harder, look at our masterclass sessions with elite sports people sharing their top tips. You could decrease the size of bats and balls when practising our striking skills. More ideas, ask your parents or carer to help you search for baseball specific content. Play a game of rounders or baseball against your parents, carer or sibling. All of our activities can be adapted using the STEP Principle. That's looking at the space, the task, the equipment we use, and how people can help us. For example, a balloon with beads or rice in to support visually impaired learners. We can have bigger, brighter, tactile, weighted resources, or we could adapt the space in activities to suit wheelchair users. For example, changing the space to ensure the learner can move freely from base to base in their wheelchair.

Brilliant baseball everyone! Bye! See you next time!

Share your work with Oak National. If you'd like to, please ask your parents or carer to share your work on Twitter tagging at Oak National and with the hashtag Learn with Oak. We'd love to see your brilliant baseball.

Rounders / Baseball (Part 1)

Rounders / Baseball (Part 1)

These resources will be removed by the end of the Spring Term 2026.

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