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Originally posted by Jorx
Sure that everything was right.
Anyhow - onto what my mind drifted was that has anyone experience teaching those things as natural. Especially rolling and movement - so that they won't have to learn to walk AGAIN but they will just learn that there are two different ways of moving. And that they won't be "afraid" to roll etc etc.
Jorgen
Estonian Aikikai
Riveta Sportsclub
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The really little guys love to move(4-6 years, I don't do younger as they have almost zero focus for technical instruction). Anything that involves constant movement is pretty easy to teach them (irimi tenkan, uke following drills, blending drills, footwork drills like step turn and triangles etc.) I don't find that teaching them rolling is easy at all. They tend to do barrel rolls rather than straighter rolls and they have very short attention spans for working out the technical details of rolling. On the other hand, they are very light and don't get hurt when they roll incorrectly so I let them do what they do as long as it is circular and it doesn't hurt. As they get a bit older they tend to self correct.
One of the things they really like is playing attack the Sensei at the end of class. You can only do this with a small group but they go after you and you roll them around. They begin to develop very fearless ukemi. Getting thrown becomes natural. Because they are soo light you can control how hard they are hitting and make sure thay don't get hurt. As they go forward you start to stress that they take better and more formal ukemi as they attack you. Eventually they get to the point of being real ukes.