June 21 - Sweet Ninja Moves

Today was a very special edition of Sweet Ninja Moves (where I drill the kids with martial arts training) because Zephyr is going for his first karate promotion this afternoon. So it's his last chance to brush up for it. 

Lyric insisted on going first (since he came up with the idea to do sweet ninja moves as a morning activity). 

#MorningFunManifesto #SweetNinjaMoves

A video posted by Robert Sosin (@chompyduchamp) on Jun 21, 2016 at 4:48am PDT

Finding the right piece of paper to hit was tricky because every piece of paper in the house has a drawing on it (thanks to Lyric's mania for drawing Pokèmon) and they consider each piece special. But we finally were able to settle on a piece and practice: 

Zephyr training for his promotion #MorningFunManifesto #SweetNinjaMoves

A video posted by Robert Sosin (@chompyduchamp) on Jun 21, 2016 at 5:08am PDT

Selfgrade: B. I think Zephyr is ready for the promotion, I got to tell him about getting back into guard stance after every punch, so mission accomplished. But I could have done way more if I prepared better.  

EDIT: well, Zephyr had his promotion later in the day and NAILED THAT SUCKER. 

So proud of him! 

April 19 - Sweet Ninja Moves

HYPOTHESIS: By adding in an element of fantastical training, children will more readily participate in physical fitness exercises.

PROCEDURE: This weekend, at the auction to benefit the kids' school, they handed out these light-up styrofoam wands so that parents could bid on stuff in the darkness. I stealthily absconded with a few of them and gave them to the kids, with the intention of using them as sticks to duck under and jump over for Sweet Ninja Moves. And it LOOKED AWESOME.

Lyric jumps over Zephyr's leg sweep

Zephyr dodges Lyric's vertical strike

Zephyr ducks Lyric's upper sweep

We also did some more of the "Rocks / Arrows / Noodles / Chambers" stuff we did last time, but those pictures didn't come out nearly as cool as the three above.

RESULTS: Possibly some minor improvements from last month, but nothing major. But I really liked seeing their focus while doing the "Rocks / Arrows / Noodles / Chambers" stuff, those karate lessons are paying off.

March 23 - Sweet Ninja Moves

The kids have been taking Karate classes at this fantastic dojo recently, and today's Sweet Ninja Moves activity is essentially lifted whole-cloth from two things they do there which I kind of love. They're simple games that train for focus and let the kids have fun doing it.

First there's the listening game ofArrows / Rocks / Noodles / Chambers, which is just Simon Says with Karate hand positions. Arrows are open hands, rocks are fists, noodles are wiggly fingers (not used often in actual karate, I'm guessing), and chambers are fists pulled back to your chest.

Once the kids know the positions, you just bark out orders and they have to keep up. You can also throw in "crazy rocks" or "crazy noodles" to make them wave their hands around while in the correct position, that's fun. It's so simple but it's so good for them to get practice immediately processing information and acting on it. To play well requires focus, and that's SO IMPORTANT to instill in your kids. I don't do it nearly enough.

After that as a warm up, we moved on to a dodging challenge. In this, you take a tubular object and have kids jump over it as it comes towards them on the floor, or duck under it when it comes at them horizontally in the air, or dodge to the side as it comes at them vertically. In the dojo they use pool noodles to do this, which probably works better than what I used, an old toy lightsaber. But it did the trick alright.

Duck!

The kids had to learn to stay on their feet, even while ducking. They kept on wanting to play this over and over again, and Zephyr REALLY wanted a turn swinging the lightsaber.

Lyric jumping over the lightsaber attack. Sweet ninja moves indeed.

This was a quick one... or at least it felt quick. Time really does fly when you're having fun.

And we were having fun.