Its been great fun designing the mats.

The format for making the mats is as follows; there are two classes of 26 children each and they will swap half way throught the workshop. So each class will work for approximately 40 minutes on the mats. To make it easier for everyone to contribute, I have decided two mats will be necessary, although thats still 13 making each mat. Each group will have an adult helper.

When they swap, the new class will take over and complete the mats.

There are 53 children who will eventually play the games, albeit in shifts as there is also a free-standing bean bag game to play. When I started to think a bit more about how the mats will be used, I thought 4 mats would be ideal, but I can’t see that we would get 4 mats made in the time, and material costs are an issue here, so its going to be 2!

My son Ben came up with the suggestion that a person shape would be great, so that the bean bags score highest when thrown where it is most likely to find scabies on an elderly person’s body. We thought about just using colours, but felt this might be to complex to play with a large group, so have opted for colours and numbers.

The ‘person’ shaped mat

The square mat

The square mat is based on vinyl samples donated by Tapis, a local carpet shop. The 6 squares will be decorated (and transported) separately and put together so that the green, high scores are in the middle.

I just hope PVA glue works on vinyl – must test this out!