KID COACH'S CLIPBOARD : How to Teach Young Children/Kid's to Field a Baseball (Part 1-Static)

Fielding Made Simple, Learning Made Fun

Introduction

Before children can learn how-to field a baseball you need to teach them a few fundamental steps. This instruction is designed with beginner athletes, ages 3-6, in mind. It has been scripted for ease of use and your convenience. This turnkey approach to fielding is FREE. This means you can begin working immediately to teach your child the proper fundamentals of fielding a baseball in fun and creative ways.

Prior to getting started, you should know that young children struggle with a few basic fielding issues. One issue is young children routinely fail to get their glove down low enough to the ground to field the baseball. Consequently, what this means is the baseball is going to roll, more times than not, through their legs. Don't worry, I provide you a quick and easy solution for this problem. The second issue is related something I talk about in Part II of this fielding blog where I discuss how to work with your young child on incorporating movement into his fielding technique. Young children often fail to understand what it means to move laterally towards a ground ball that is hit near them but not directly at them. What this creates is many missed opportunities and again don't worry because I will provide you with exercises to help you learn quick and easy solutions to teach your child the value of moving towards the ball.

Getting started, the first thing I will talk about is getting children to demonstrate the proper fielding stance. When you work with a young child, it requires a little more patience. You must think like a child and since many of us don't remember what it was like to be really young, it requires thinking about things from the child's point of view. My instruction creates teachable moments that are broken down into manageable bites that reflect the child's perspective. You don't have to be a coach, a teacher or even ever played baseball to get it. All you need to do is buy-in and its all downhill afterwards. After all, if the process were easy, we should just be able to say to young children, "Get your glove down low," and they would just get it. Unfortunately that is not the case and it is the reason we are in this process together.

You will learn a timeless fielding approach that has been used to introduce generations of new baseball players but that is not all. I will share with you several additional steps I created to round out the instruction and make it better. By the end of this you will be able to feel confident you gave your young child a complete lesson of the fielding process.

My hope is that this new information will leave you excited to work on fielding with your son or daughter. I'd love to hear you comments about how it works for you and please do pay it forward by sharing via twitter and facebook using the links above. Thanks ~ Coach Pickles!

Teaching Time: 4 Minutes

# of Steps: 4 Easy Steps

Level of Instructional Difficulty: Easy

Ages Appropriate for: 3.5 years +

Keyword or phrases: Shuffle, Glove Low-to-the-Snow, Alligator, Belly button, Throw

Learning Objectives:

1. Parents/coaches will better understand how young children learn best.
2. Parents/coaches will better understand the physical and mental limitations of young children and how detailed instruction needs to get.
3. Parents/coaches will be provided scripts that will help them confidently teach techniques that work for young children of every skill level.
4. Parents/coaches will be provided games that can be incorporated into the learning process.
5. Parents/coaches will be provided a seamless approach designed to keep fielding simple and make learning fun.

Fielding Instruction

As you will find with many of my tot-lessons that help you better understand how young children best understand sports, fielding is explained telling a simple story. In fact, this is one of the earliest stories I created and although over time every story is improved upon, this one, at its core, has remained relatively close to the original story and holds a certain sentimental value for me.

Try it out this script with your young child. Always remember to be patient and let your child attempt to answer as many questions on their own as they can.

1. Ask, "What is green and lives in the swamp?" Answer: Alligator. Challenge your child to create an alligator's mouth (without a glove or ball first). To do this you extend one arm out with your hand palm up and your other arm out with hand palm down. Proceed to open and close your alligators' mouth clapping your hands together. Have fun with it. I like to chomp the alligator's mouth saying, "High-to-the-sky, CHOMP! CHOMP! CHOMP!" and saying, "Low-to-the-snow, CHOMP! CHOMP! CHOMP! Repeat these steps several times to maximize the fun in learning. Add a glove and repeat. Kids love the unexpected so I say, "This alligator is different than other alligators. He does not live in the swamp where it is warm, instead he lives in the North Pole where there is snow and it is cold. He lives there because he loves to eat snowballs. Today let's imagine our baseballs are snowballs and we use our alligators to eat the snowballs."
2. Next, I point to my chin and ask kids, "What is this?" If they don't know I tell them and explain, "Alligators have chins too. In order to eat snow balls they have to keep their chins low-to-the-snow." I then demonstrate what happens when I create my alligator and I don't put his chin low-to-the-snow, the snowball (baseball) rolls through my legs. Challenge kids saying, "Make your alligator with your glove and put its chin low to the snow" Demonstrate the alligator's chomping motion with them low-to-the-snow.
3. The next step is often missed in early fielding instruction but it is crucial because it describes the transitional point (the belly button) between fielding and throwing. Help kids understand "Once the alligator eats the baseball, it goes down his throat and into his... (point to your belly) Answer: Belly. Roll them each a baseball or tennis ball. As you've done previously always repeat, "Alligator low to the snow," after the ball's been fielded tell your child, "Belly button". They will put the ball at their belly button simulating the ball entering the alligator's belly. Again, this key step simulates sucking up the baseball into the body as a fielder makes the transition from fielding into throwing a baseball. Your child will get to the point of making this looking more natural but at first expect it to look a bit mechanical.
   
4. The last and final step is to say, "Throw." Do not be too worried about the form of the throw, whether your child steps and throws or where the ball goes. Focus exclusively on the fielding for a time and later you will have time to refine skills and put them all together.

See Part 2 of this instruction to add the dynamic element of shuffling or moving towards the ball using the three easy steps of "Alligator low to the snow," "Belly button," "Throw." If they forget a step stop them and tell them what they have missed. The more you use the terminology I've outlined here the longer you will be able to extend the learning opportunity.

Instructional Reminders

• Have patience. Introduce only a few steps at a time. Children learn best by doing. Refine fielding a baseball and then add more instruction like running and throwing.

• Use a hands off approach to teaching. Use my easy phrases (i.e. "glove low to the snow," "alligator," "belly button," "throw") children can understand and remember. This way they can be empowered to be self-directed and self-correcting. My philosophy is children do all the work. Be a leader in this sense. It also allows them to be more engaged and enjoy the instruction.

• Inspire children with praise. Being open and encouraging makes you more well received and often puts you in better control of kids. Children live for praise. Positive feedback builds confidence, improves listening capacity, helps develop emotional maturity, and enables a child's ability to find value in self-improvement.

  
  

• Avoid frustration, focus your praise on the small wins of fielding a baseball. Perfect fielding does not exist at this level. Children get better as they practice more. Make sure, as a group, they know what the language of the steps are at the very least.

Make Learning Fun

Ouch Game

Have a bag full of tennis balls ready. Place tennis balls five yards ahead of the line the kids are standing on. When you say go kids will run up to the tennis balls field them and throw them at you. Walk them through the first time in slow motion reminding them of all the fielding steps. Each time ball is thrown kids return to the bag of balls and retrieve a new ball they then replacethe old ball with on the ground.

Variation: Move to different spots so they have to locate you before, during and after fielding the baseball. Another variation is to stand behind them and make them field the tennis ball and throw back towards where they came from.

Advanced Instruction for fielding a baseball for players 6+ years old

Four Cone Drill

Use four cones. Starting at the first cone, player fields the ball and runs to the next cone and throws ball back to you. They field a ball where they are at, run to the next cone and throw ball back to you. They field the ball where they are at and run to the next cone and throw ball back to you. For the last time, they field the ball where they are at and run to the next cone and throw ball back to you.