3-5 y/o program...should I?

[patroldawg27]

We have a 3-5 year old Little Dragons program. They mainly do the basic stretching, jumping jacks, and horse riding stance techniques. We also play games with them and they have their own belt system. It's a half hour class two days a week. We have had good success with it. Sometimes it's one of the larger classes. It also works as a great feeder class when they're old enough. We have a few black belts that started as Little Dragons.

 

[TigerWoman]

Our school has a four-five year old class. Three year olds just do not have enough attention span to do anything. They could be doing stretches one minute and running around the next. Too many of these and its chaos. Even some four year olds are very demanding of time. I hope you have an assistant or two depending on how large your class gets. I was an assistant for two years. I can't say my master instructor's approach was the greatest though. He would try to put them at a small bag and have them kick. Well that lasted about two minutes. And someone always ended up banging their foot on the base and running to mommy. I did see them getting more disciplined though ever so slowly. I won over three girls giving them extra attention but their parents didn't keep them going over the summer so...

Instead I would devise short games, jumping over small objects, running--lots of running around things, kicking at objects, like a balloon on a cone, through a hoop, balancing on a board with one foot, punching at a clown face taped on a bag, using those rubber feet silhouettes to place them doing long stances-sticky the back with rubber cement-dried,on those as they move and have them follow the path. They did learn form, Ki-Bon Hyung so eventually they were able to test if they were disciplined enough. We also did monkey-run on all fours, hopping on lily pads-one foot-two feet, jumping over low barricades-front, sideways, two feet, running backward around cones. You could say these were rewards in itself but they really thought that board breaking was the end reward for listening, being quiet and staying on task. We did hammer, axe kick, palm, stomp on a very easy rebreakable board. That's where you need two assistants to hold the boards so that it moves along faster. Everyone who behaved got a high five and they like stickers too for good behavior. It helps that I was a Daisy (5yr olds) and Brownie Girl Scout leader. TW