Pulling Taffy Rock Stars

The big day had come: the day to teach Pulling Taffy to my current class at Shell Point Retirement Community. Since the class meets at 3:30pm, there was plenty of time to reflect on previous classes and to recall difficulties that seniors had experienced while learning “the Taffies.”

I have observed over nine years of teaching that many older students have a tendency to turn over the hand that begins palm up, ending with the high hand palm facing down rather than in the upward receiving position, so I was determined to think of a way to encourage them to keep their palms up during this movement.

I took a basket of polished stones to class and asked each student to select one. They could not wait to see what they were going to do with the earthy stones. We began working on the hand movements. They were instructed to place their stone in their left palm at their low waist with their right palm facing down hovering over it. Next, they were asked to move their hand containing the stone to their left until it was in the high hand “taffy” position, leaving the right hand where it was for now.

Not one of the 31 stones dropped. Not a sound. Every student had their hand in the correct position, proudly displaying their stone. They repeated the same movement a number of times. Not one hand turned over, not one stone dropped. Then they switched hands and placed their stones in their right hands to do the same. Again, no stones fell; they were having fun with no confusion. We eventually practically effortlessly, working into the rest of Pulling Taffy. I was practically giddy over how effective the simple stones were in overcoming that particular difficulty. I dubbed the beaming group my “Pulling Taffy Rock Stars.”

Some of these students had taken the class many times and prior to this class were sharing concerns about learning “the Taffies” again with other students. But the stones helped win over the skeptics. My hope is that this positive experience may help instructors ease their groups into being Pulling Taffy Rock Stars, too.