Children and Ju-Jitsu

Hi here, I'm new here. I was just wondering if any of you guys had any suggestions of any games or drills that I could use to teach young children (4-7) Ju-Jitsu but have fun at the same time. I've got my first proper teaching lesson next week and just wondered if you could offer some tips.

Regards
Mob$tarr

I used to teach 3(!) to 14 year olds, I think really ya just need to keep it fun, and nothing more, don't worry too much about the martial arts, atleast at the start of the class.

The trick is to blend in the MA stuff in between the games.

Maybe a sumo fight with a few belts tied together, or simple races down the mats doing different strikes, etc.

Ensure you start with fun, and end with it, and try to do the forms/kata's, etc in between.

Don't end on something serious, cos that's the last thing they'll remember.

If your email address is valid, I'll send you over some stuff too which I'm sure you'll find usefull.

I don't have an answer for you but I think that it's important to mention to be very careful with the joints of young children. They're aren't finished growing and an injury at that age could cripple them later on, I have a bad shoulder to prove it.

Cheers Rob for the e-mail, some great advice there. As for the injury thing, I'm not gonna make the kids do anything that has a high injury risk to it, its all about them just having fun and hopefully learning something.

Well its my first lesson tomorrow night, I think I come up with a lesson plan that will keep them all entertained. Relay races I think are gonna be good, whilst incorporating some techniques into it, a guard passing games and to finish a good old game of Lions, I'll let y'all know how it goes!
Cheers for the advice!
Mob$tarr

Games and fun are the way, it's just how you slip in the ju-jitsu into it without them even noticing they're training.

With some proper serious training too of course.

Well the lesson went well, nobody killed each other which is always a good sign. They particulary enjoyed the realay racing but they all learnt something which is good, thanks for the tips!

Mob$tarr

I've been training since I was 7 and classes were pretty much standard martial arts classes although i struggled for a while with being much smaller than everyone.

Decent games we did were bulldog but crawling and a 3 sec pin meaning elimination, joining belts and standing in a circle whilst someone whipped the belt in a circle (everyone jumps over, if you fail, you're out and the belt is slowly raised).

my favourite was using handheld punchbags on the floor and doing diving breakfalls over them. If you touched the bag you were out and then bags were added to increase the distance.

I'm was, and am still very small. I find it work to my advantage, because the suckers can't see you!