Day 283: Thursday, August 20

Teacher: "Run to third, run to third!"
Student: "Naw, I'm tired. I think I will just take a nap." She proceeds to plop down on the ground behind second base.

Attempting to play wiffle ball with 83 second graders was not our brightest idea. As you can see from the conversation above, most of them have no idea how the game works. There were so many kids roaming around the field picking flowers, doing hair, or slapping shoulders that at one point we had 5 kids on first base without even realizing it. They were so clueless on the rules of the game they didn't even know that when the next person hits the ball, you run to the next base. And don't even get me started on third base. Half the kids never even made it there. The game pretty much became a lesson on the basic rules of baseball without the outs. One kid would hit, then run to first. The next kid would hit and run to first while I would convince the previous batter that you now have to run to second. And on and on it went for a grueling half hour. Needless to say, we are going to rethink our idea of playing Alaskan Baseball next week and find an idea that 83 seven-year-olds can actually handle.

This picture can give you just a taste of the fun. The boy in the yellow was being pummeled by another student and rubbing his head. We have the girl up closer in the picture who had just sat and stared at the ball fly over her head. I would have tried to convince her to run after it, but it was too much added to the stress of convincing the batter to stay at first and the previous runner to run to second.