The Game Within the Child

Bottom Line? Cheer like crazy, don't tell them what to do. For years, I observed this interesting phenomenon with our youngest players, when a goal was scored, everyone cheered except the kids playing the game. They would look around at all the adults shouting and have little idea why they were all shouting. Because they hadn't grown up watching soccer and many have never even touched a ball before their parents took them to the first practice or game, they had no idea what to do. Through my practices and coaching education courses and coaches meetings, I tried to emphasize teaching the kids how to celebrate after they scored a goal so that they would begin to understand why all the parents were cheering. Finally, one season, there was a U6 player who had watched soccer on TV and played with his family. He knew exactly what to do and was able to emulate multiple soccer stars goal celebrations. He was so good that he even helped his teammates celebrate their goals as well. O...

One of the challenges I give my students early in the year is to describe how a molecule of water moves from the mouth to a muscle cell in the arm. The goal of this exercise is for the students to be able to demonstrate their understanding of the three fluid compartments in the body: plasma (the non-living part of the blood), interstitial fluid (the fluid that surrounds cells) and intracellular fluid (the fluid inside cells). Students can reliably get the water to the stomach, but then struggle to complete the process. We know that fluid moves throughout our body and that some of the fluid stays in our body and some is lost through sweat, urine, feces and breathing.  The precise mechanisms by which this happens are a little tricky and exposing students to this process enables them to gain a greater understanding of how difficult it is to maintain homeostasis generally.  One of our common experiences is that we sweat when we exercise or are in hot weather. We all know t...