Rainbow Hitting 🌈
🎯 Objective
Practice forehands and backhands while moving sideways across the rainbow!
🧠 Focus: movement, timing, accuracy, tracking, confidence
🎭 Story Introduction
“Welcome to the Rainbow Challenge! 🌈 Your mission is to travel along the rainbow and collect all the colours — but you must use your tennis racket magic to unlock each one with a powerful shot!”
🏗️ Setup
• Use one side of the court or a hitting area
• Line up 5 different coloured traffic cones (or flat spots) in a wide rainbow arc across the hitting zone (start close to the net for younger groups)
• Mark a starting line in the corner of the court
• Coach stands with balls to drop-feed or racket-feed
🎾 How to Play
1. Children start at the corner of the rainbow 🌈
2. Coach feeds to Cone 1 (closest), player hits a forehand
3. They shuffle sideways like a crab to the next colour
4. Repeat across all 5 cones, one shot per station
5. Once finished, the child:
o Returns to the back of the queue
o Helps collect balls
o Or hits on a spin machine if you have one! 🎾⚙️
6. After everyone has had a go — switch sides and repeat with backhands
🕺 While waiting: Encourage “dancing feet” and quick reactions
💬 Coach cues: “Stay on your toes!”, “Paint the rainbow!”, “Nice footwork, crab!”
🪶 Feathers (Simplifications)
• Let them walk cone-to-cone slowly if crab shuffle is too tricky
• Coach stands closer and feeds underarm
• Use balloons, beanbags or foam balls for nervous tots
• Let them do just 3 colours instead of all 5
⚡️ Progressions (Challenges)
• Use racket feeds or fast drop-feeds
• Add targets behind the cones (buckets, hoops)
• Challenge: “Can you hit 3 in a row over the net?”
• Combine both forehands & backhands in one rainbow
• Add a reaction challenge: call out random cone colours instead of moving in order
• Time trial: “Who can do all 5 with good technique in 30 seconds?”
🎉 Seasonal Variations
🎅 Christmas:
Line up Christmas baubles (coloured cones) and “decorate the tree” by hitting each colour. Can you hit the star (gold cone) last?
🐣 Easter:
It’s an Easter Egg Hunt! Hit one egg of each colour and try to get the golden egg at the end.
🎃 Halloween:
Witch’s Potion Ingredients! Each colour is a spooky ingredient: slime, spider legs, eyeballs... Hit them all to complete the potion!
❤️ Valentine’s Day:
Hit the colours of the “Heart Rainbow” to unlock Cupid’s arrow — hit a pink or red cone at the end for a love bonus 💘
👩 Mother’s Day / 👨 Father’s Day:
Decorate Mum’s/Father’s rainbow with special colours — one for hugs, one for laughter, one for helping, etc. Each hit is a thank-you!