Mat Slamming

We have a group of 3-year-old boys who, as three-year-old boys do every year at around this time, are letting me know they're ready for wrestling. You know the ones, the guys who just can't keep their hands off of one another, who spontaneously wrestle with one another as readily as they say, "Hi." I've already written quite a bit about the wrestling part of Woodland Park's curriculum (Why We Wrestle, Wrestling 2010, They Went Home Tired), and this post isn't even about wrestling, so I won't go into it here any more than to say that many adults see "fighting," but these 3-year-olds know it's not.

I like to start by introducing wrestling first with our older, bigger Pre-K kids with the idea that they can help me remind their smaller, younger classmates of the rules and expectations when we lay down the mats for the whole class. This in mind, I had our gym mats ready on Tuesday, leaned against the wall. Typically, we arrange one group of mats in a rectangle for wrestling, while we put the rest in an end-to-end strip for those not inclined so that they can practice their "tumbling." Instead of introducing it as a pre-determined activity, I merely said, "Today we're playing with mats."

As the kids eagerly unfolded them and arranged them around the floor according to their own ideas, I suggested as casually as I could, "Hey, maybe we could wrestle," which was met immediately with a chorus of "No!" Okay then. I offered instead, "Maybe we should practice our tumbling." We agreed to this and set about arranging the mats in a long end-to-end strip.

During this process one of the mats got turned up on its end for a moment, the way we do for our annual mat maze. One of the children, I think it was Sylvia, launched her body into it, slamming herself and the mat to the floor together in one loud slap. As a boy, my brother and I used to build cardboard block structures at the end of a long hallway, then charge into them. Sylvia brought that back to me and the idea was born.

I stood a mat up at the end of the tumbling strip and called, "Who wants to knock it down?"

Soon the children were lining themselves up at one end of the room, taking turns running full speed, then slamming their bodies one at a time into the mat. What fun!

We tried two, then three mats, creating a sort of domino effect. And as you can see from these photos, we had a lot of fun experimenting with launching ourselves into them backwards, rolling into them, and detouring around them to hit them from the other side.

I tried out the term, "body bowling" to describe what we were doing, but I believe the kids are calling it "mat slamming." 

We did it again the following week and we still haven't gotten around to wrestling.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!