advice for setting up a training for children.

[Fimbulvinter]

the main instructor put me in charge of the children's group at our club during their next training. but i'm unsure how to go through the training.

it lasts for about 1h10mins, and it's an ITF taekwondo club. so the training should be focused on striking.

i think it should start out with 10-15 minutes of something game-ish. just to get the training started. seeing as they are under 13 they don't really need to warm up, but something fun that just gets them started, and preferably something related to taekwondo would be nice. maybe like taekwondo-tag, where the one getting taken has to do something taekwondo related until they are freed. any interesting game i should try introduce?


after that, i'll have them go a little fun sparring exercise.

after that, i'm getting more unsure about how to structure the general training. it should be some curriculum based training, so four directional kicks, (most of them have 4 kicks to practice for their gradings), and later going patterns would be nice(they have two patterns at most). but seeing as this will take a large portion of the training, i'm worried i might make them repeat the same stuff for too long and get bored.

i then think target kicking would be nice and fun. for them, lasting about 10 minutes.

last part would be 10-15 minutes with strength training.

so...
summarised it would be:
10 minutes start up game.
5 minutes of sparring exercise.
10 minutes of kicking exercise.
10-15 minutes of going patterns.
10 minutes of target exercise.
10 minutes of strength training.

so. i'm wondering, is this evenly distributed? and if i don't manage to fill it. any useful "doesn't have to be taekwondo but useful in martial arts" type of exercise that can be introduced?

thanks.

 

[Stac3y]

I would do warmup exercises to start--it gets them focused on what they are doing. Use the game portion at the end as a reward for good behavior/hard work/getting through their workout efficiently. We do "Karate Simon Says;" it works better if the students are all of similar rank. Another one you can use is a relay race, where they are broken into teams who have to race across the room doing a certain number of techniques or exercises at certain points.

 

[Andrew Green]

End with something fun, not strength training. You want them class to end with them wanting more, not waiting for the time to run out so they can leave