I recently worked with an after-school program full of kindergarten boys who loved paper airplanes. the only problem is that they weren’t super great at making airplanes that flew far. They got discouraged with their airplane after throwing it a few times and seeing it land only a few feet away. So, they’d grab more paper and try again (folding it the exact same way). So the cycle would repeat itself until all the paper was gone. This seemed like a waste of paper to only use the airplane for 3 throws, so I decided to see what I could do to help these little guys appreciate their little planes, even though they didn’t fly very far. I used chalk to draw a line from which to throw the planes, and shapes on the ground with point values written inside. I taught the boys how to take turns throwing their planes from the line to see if they could hit a specific target. Since they were little, they didn’t care about the total points they earned, but had a blast seeing who could land on the targets with 100 points.
I made sure to have plenty of targets and many that were only a few feet away so the kids with wacky-folded planes would be able to participate. The boys were much more entertained. Mission accomplished!