I´m beginning my Kids Class

Hi Aiki-People!

I want to share with you that i´m begining my kids group on saturday oct 7. I´m planning to teach just saturdays and sundays. one hour and a half each class.... (is it too long for kid each class?)

Do you have any tip i can use?,..

Take care.

Hi
I teach a kids class once a week, for 1hr. I find that by the end of the hour they are starting to loose their focus. My kids range from 6-16.

I guess the best thing you can do is keep the class moving don't stay on one thing for to long, incorporate skill based games and keep it fun.

Good luck

My adult classes are one hour. My kids classes are 50 minutes.

Actually, sometimes I go over to a full hour for the kids.

It all depends on how their focus is doing. Which seems to depend on what the class is focused on. Not surprisingly, strict curriculum classes (where they are working on their assigned techniques) tend to go to lack of focus more quickly than classes where we're focusing on dynamic stuff like randori.

Every three months or so we do a class of Aikido games. They, of course, tend to go long.

Our kids classes are about 45 minutes long. The kids are 7-11 years old.

Good luck, have fun!

Ceasar:

Have a look in the Aiki wiki- there is a big list of aikido teaching games there. I would say that one hour is the longest you can expect kids to stay focussed.

e ya later
Jill.

Hi Cesar

Good luck, I am also starting my kids class, Oct 2nd. It's going to be a new adventure for us both

Jane

was wondering what age group do you all class as "kids"

Hi !

In our dojo kids classes are 90min. ages are from 12 to 16 years.
We do ca. 30 min. warm up ,this makes it possible to do 6 techniques in depth.

This age group can focus all 90 minutes , but younger kids can't focus more than 60 minutes,
and you have to allow some kind of playing with the younger kids.

We used to have 60 minutes classes but that just wasn't enough to progress,at a satisfactory rate.

We make a 2 minutes break halfways , so everybody can have some water ,this a very good idea, as the often don't drink water in school and are slightly dehydrated when they come.

Good luck to you.

Kids over age 10 can usually go longer than one hour, but not those who are younger. Lots of great information on teaching children is on Rob Kent's website, http://aikidokids.com/

We also plan to have another Aiki Kodomo Kenshukai "How to Teach Aikido to Children" seminar next year in the San Francisco Bay Area.

hi again to all!!!

Thank you very much for your advices, this is the poster i´m using to promote the group.

One thing no one has mentioned is discipline. Issues will arise and it's important to be prepared for them. I highly recommend the book "Positive Discipline" for preparing to deal with these issues.

Most of them turn out to be so simple even when they look complicated. Of course, there are some you will have no direct control over, but even then you can mitigate the resulting problems IME.

Hi Cesar

Love the poster, don't speak Spanish so I didn't understand much past what I assume to be 'Aikido for kids' though . Bright and colourful, just what catches the attention of kids, hope both you and they have fun with it.

Gavin