Fizzing Whizbee

Levitating sherbet balls? Almost. Unfortunately, I have no ice cream that reduces gravity. I do have Frisbees, and they have no fangs.

Often when kids come to play in my yard, I give them some toys and let them be. These are normally roving bands of toddlers, so they are pretty good at entertaining themselves (sometimes tormenting animals or climbing my clothesline, but I digress). Given an impossible to bust soccer ball, a few jump ropes, and most importantly, hula hoops, and these kids are occupied for hours. I'm often impressed by the creativity I see here with kids; balls made out of any material you can think of, old ropes liberated from who knows where for skipping purposes, little cars make out of scrap metal, and tons of games involving small stones (think jacks with no bouncy ball). Hula hoops are a little harder to make from scrap material, which I think is why mine are so popular. That and these four year olds can move their hips like I'll never be able to :)

Once or twice a week I try and play with them for a little while, and usually this involves playing frisbee. I'm really bad at hula hooping and soccer, and the way these kids skip rope I'd either break an ankle or get a rope to the face (I'm a bit taller than they are). So I brought out two frisbees a few months ago. My donated backpack of sports equipment actually has four frisbees, but since the kids only throw them to me and not to each other, we stick with two, as I can only protect my face from two things flying at it at a time. The older ones, maybe eight have caught on how to throw pretty well. The smaller ones are working on it, and often still leap out of the way screaming with laughter when I throw to them, even if it's coming at their feet. 

Today I went outside to play and realized that the weather might make things interesting.  Gale force winds sort of make a frisbee into a boomarang. Several times I threw it to the kids and then caught it myself. Twice we almost got one stuck on my roof. The wind catching the frisbee seemed to delight the kids even more than usual, so we kept going. With me not being able to throw accurately, it turned into a sandy game of 500, with me throwing as far as I could, the kids running screaming after it, and then the wind catching it so the kids wind up diving all over each other in the sand. I don't think they are used to seeing the wind catch things like that; because I don't think soccer balls have the same problem.

I think I might tell the next volunteer to get a kite :)