Middle school students begin the year at my school every other year by studying different forces. I knew a fun way to bring in forces to PE class would be by creating a game based on collisions! Obviously, I did not want the students to smash into each other. Instead, I needed a different way of demonstrating the results of collisions. For all my elder millennials and Gen-Xers, you may remember a game called Crossfire from your youth. The game’s premise was to hit a metal pinwheel with a ball-bearing shot from a small toy gun attached to the game board. The goal was to get the pinwheel to your opponent’s side by hitting it repeatedly with your ball bearings. Each successful hit would slowly move the piece closer and closer to your opponent’s side. Getting it to the other side scored a point. I took this idea and made it the scoring mechanism for this game, but we enlarged everything! Besides reinforcing Newton’s Laws of Motion concepts, this game can work well as a fun dodgeball substitute. In this game, humans are not the targets, but it still has all the dynamic action of dodgeball. So, if your students are studying Newton’s Laws, this is the perfect game to complement their investigation into motion.

Materials: 

·      Various large yoga balls

·      Soccer balls (size three works better, even for the older students)

You can use kickballs instead

·      Dodgeballs

·      Tennis balls

·      Jump rope or cones to mark the halfway line and the boundary lines

Minimum Number of Students Needed: This game needs at least four students (2 v 2) but is much more fun with an entire class.

Age: All Ages