Yesterday, I volunteered at a WQPT event called Imagination Station, which is a day for young children to "meet" PBS Kids characters and engage in activities related to those shows.
My group was placed in the Cat room of the "Peg + Cat" show, which I have never seen and do not know anything about, beyond the fact that it involves a girl named Peg and her Cat. The three activities we managed were a pattern game, a maracas craft table, and a chicken toss game. I stayed with the chicken toss, which was not quite as popular as the maracas craft, but much more successful than the pattern game.
The chickens being tossed were fuzzy cotton-ish things, some of which were decorated with little features to look like chickens. The goal of the game was to toss those items into a row of eight plastic buckets on the floor. It was interesting to see the different strategies employed by different children: some went to the end of the row and threw into successive buckets, some stood back and threw into varying buckets (usually the one on the end labeled "8"), and some just walked up and dropped the chickens in. (That works.)
If I had a nickel for every time I said to a small child, "Do you want to try the chicken toss?", I would be in the top one percent. My job was to greet people, demonstrate the tossing, encourage the tossers, and pick up all the chickens. I'm not well-accustomed to dealing with kids, but there was a minimum of problematic behavior. I had a fine time, and hopefully my involvement made a little difference.
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