Give your child a head start in life.
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For this age group, beginner friendliness & a warm and calm environment is essential. We know how important this is.
And the class content is extremely simple. You simply cannot treat 3 year old children like they’re 7. Those two age groups are worlds apart.
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This age group doesn’t do well sitting still for long at all. Things have to stay fresh and moving.
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Preschool aged children typically can’t handle more than two or three steps in an instruction. All legacy class content is structured accordingly. The same goes for the actual martial arts techniques.
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In this age group, 80% of the class is structured in the form of martial arts “games”. It keeps the kids going.
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The average student to teacher ratio in this age group is 4 to 1. This is typically the sweet spot for this age group. And it usually means we have at least one good / older / more mature example to lead the way.
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It goes without saying, but this age group of course does not spar with one another. There are no 3 year old death matches at our school. Just technique training on targets, some physical coordination drills, some exercises, & some martial arts games.
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At the beginning of every single class, students are reminded and often made to repeat back that: “Martial arts are only for the bad guys”. We then define the “bad guys” as people are trying to seriously hurt your body. It works out well. We rarely get any complaints, if any at all.
But like all things, children need to be reminded 1,000 times.
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The biggest mistake that’s often made with this age group is to simply not understand them fundamentally.
For starters, this age group has a very limited reliable vocabulary. So visual instruction beats verbal instruction almost always. Although combined is ideal.
At this age, we know full well that a 4 year old boy is going to spin around in circles sometimes. We know that a 3 year old girl is going to interrupt sometimes.
The key is to guide them towards learning how to function in the structured environment.
The same goes for the curriculum and training content. It has to match the age group. Super basic stuff.