Movement skills/concepts

Dropping a ball to punt, kicking a ball up in the air, space awareness (levels and body parts), and body awareness.

Set-up

• Balloons, lightweight kicking balls, goals (rope or elastic suspended between two uprights/chairs).
• Wall or netting fence around the perimeter of grass or hard court area. Children work in pairs, sitting, and then standing.

Activity: Sitting

Children in pairs discuss the following questions:

• What is punting?
• Which games/sports use punting skills?
• What words would you use to describe what a punt is?
• Which sportspeople do you know who are good at punting?
• Why do you think they are good at punting? What have you seen them do?
• What do they do with their legs, feet, body?

Standing up, pretending

Let’s pretend we are punting a ball:

• How high did it go? Did it go over a goal?
• What did we do with our arms, legs, feet?

Standing up, having a go

Let’s have a go at punting: stand up, with a ball, spread out in the playing area and face a wall, netting fence or partner.

Can you …?

• holding the ball in two hands, drop it to the ground in front of you, then, after the first bounce, contact the ball with your shoelaces (top of shoe), kicking it to the wall or your partner
• try kicking with your left and right feet to find out which foot you prefer to kick with
• with your preferred kicking foot, drop the ball in front of you and make contact with it before it touches the ground. Practice this a few times. Try to kick it towards the wall or your partner – you are now punting!
• punt over a low height? Stand three giant steps behind the goal (this is your kicking line) and punt the ball so that it travels over the rope. Count how many times you have a go and how many times you are successful. Using our maths brain, what do we call this?
• take a series of quick steps up to the kicking line and punt over the goal

Can you see …?

• holding the ball in two hands
• guiding the ball onto the foot
• swinging from the hip
• contacting the ball with the shoelaces
• keeping head down
• following through
• using both left and right feet to kick the ball

You could ask …

What did you like about punting? What did you find hard about punting?

Variations

Explore space: Can you punt the ball so that it comes back to you, goes behind you, goes high/low/along the ground?