Not only does starting children off in sport while they are still young help instill a lifelong pattern of exercise and physical exertion, it can also build teamwork skills. Not to mention the fact that sports are a great way to have fun! However, finding fun baseball drills for 5-6 year olds can be difficult because the drills need to be simple enough for the children to comprehend and put them into action. At your next practice, try some of these fun baseball drills for 5-6 year old olds to put the emphasis back on fun. Your players will be too busy enjoying themselves to notice they are working on their baseball skills as well.

The first of the fun baseball drills for 5-6 year olds is a game we call Bubba Ball. For this drill, you will need a few big plastic bats and some plastic balls. You can either run this drill on the diamond or start off by setting up a smaller diamond in the outfield for practice first.

Divide your team into 2 groups of around 6 players each. One team is batting while the other team is playing defense. For this drill, it works best if you have a coach pitching and a coach catching. Players do not use their gloves since you’re playing with plastic balls. The drill runs just like a scrimmage game of baseball, with the offensive focus being on clean hits and cheering for their teammates and the defense focus on soft hands when catching and throwing the ball.

The best thing about this fun drill is that is allows for a wide array of variations and quirks to make it more interesting. One fellow coach told me about a variation where he puts markers about four feet from home plate on both sides of the plate. After a player has hit a ball, they must drop the bat beyond the marker, and failure to do so results in them having to turn around and place the bat there before running to first.

Towards the end of the season it often gets to be so hot outside that my players resist practicing as much as possible. When this happens, I’ll run this drill that combines the thrill of getting wet with the anticipation of bursting balloons. For this drill, you will need to bring 100 water balloons to practice. Start by dividing your team into 2 groups that line up in 2 relay lines. For the first part of the drill, send the water balloons down the relay lines, with each player passing the balloon carefully along to the next player down the line. The ones that make it without plummeting to the ground and bursting at your players’ feet wind up in a bucket at the end of the line. For the second part of the drill, players get to stand at bat and hit the water balloons. Even your players with the most hesitant swings will follow through, motivated by the reward of seeing the big explosion that comes with a well-executed swing.