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Keentan

Skills:

Physical: balance, upper and lower limb coordination, teamwork, reaction time, hand-eye coordination

Cognitive: sustained attention, selective attention, visual processing, divided attention

Social: understanding of personal space, turn taking

Number of participants:

4 or more

Equipment:

  • medium-sized ball

Description:

  1. one child is in the middle of the group;
  2. the children surrounding the child pass around a ball to keep it away and must jump up like a kangaroo when they pass the ball

History:

This game originated from the Aboriginal peoples from the north west central districts of Queensland. Keentan means “play” in the Wik-Mungkan language. 

 

Wheelchair friendly?

This activity might not be suitable for people who use wheelchairs. “Wheelchair Friendly Activities” has a list of activities that are easy to adapt for wheelchair users. This list isn’t exhaustive, so we invite you to come up with your own creative ideas to make any activity work for you. If you have an idea on how to make this or any other activity more accessible for wheelchair users, We’d love to hear your ideas on how to make this or any other activity accessible for wheelchair users. Thank you for helping make play more inclusive!

Modifications to make the activity easier:

Change the equipment: use a larger ball to decrease physical demand

Change the task: allow the child to jump first, and then throw the ball to decrease physical demand

Modifications to make the activity harder:

Change the environment:

  • increase the number of children on the teams to increase social demand
  • have a time limit for how long the child can hold the ball to increase physical demand

Change the equipment: use a smaller ball to increase physical demand

Goal examples:

  • the child will be able to jump and pass the ball successfully 4 out of 5 times from 3m apart
  • I can catch and throw the ball to my friends