For Children 7 Years and Under
At Premier Martial Arts we call this group our Little Champions. In this program, we use 8 different skills, which are focus, teamwork, control, balance, memory, discipline, fitness, co-ordination. These things are very important for this age group as they are concepts that they will need to improve and work on for the next couple of years. We have tried to base our Little Champion system around the stepping stones of the foundation stage.
We also use success skills in this group and talk about the ‘I CAN’ attitude and get them to believe, even at that age, they can learn to believe in themselves and have a positive attitude. A lot of the things that are mentioned above are also things that the children can use in there everyday life such as at home and at school also and we also relate the skill to these places.
In these classes, our Kids Karate curriculum is broken down into small chunks so that it is easier for the children to understand and take in the important information we are trying to teach them.
By doing the above mention concepts, our Little Champions are really energized and pumped and they can easily notice when they do a great job. We understand that at this age the building of confidence is of utmost importance.
For Children 8 to 12 Years of Age
At this age, we work on a variety of different things. With the child developing and establishing themselves both individually and socially they are very susceptible to bullying and other events. We focus the work with this age group around Self Esteem and Stranger Awareness (Kid Safe). We have worked with numerous children that are bullied, struggling at school, lacking confidence, and use teaching systems based around Positive Mental Attitude.
With reference to the Kid Safe, we speak to them about stranger danger and explain certain situations and teach them a system of identification using traffic lights so the children can relate to it in that way. We explain to them that the green light means that they are safe, amber, or yellow light means the situation is starting to become dangerous or they feel nervous. Red means they are in serious danger and can use their skills to defend themselves or to escape.
The self-esteem work we do tries to encourage the ‘I CAN’ attitude. We tell them that they can do anything they want to and become anything they want to be, as long as they set their mind to it and work very hard at school. We also relate a lot of things we do to the home and at school and how they can use these things at home and at schools such as focus, discipline, and self-control.
Then we go on to what we believe is one of the most important aspects of this group which is awareness of bullying. As an organization, Premier Martial Arts emphasizes anti-bullying and we explain about personal body language, why people bully others, how it makes the bully and the victim feel and how people can change things so that they don’t become a victim or a bully. All of these issues are geared to raising the child’s self-esteem and not portraying themselves as victims, making themselves easy prey for bullies.
Other topics we cover with them are goal setting, confidence building, people skills, and other leadership skills
13 Years and Older
With children/young adults that are aged 13+ we use our non-contact based Kick Boxing program and Krav Maga classes. This involves fitness, pad work, self-defense, and encourages participation without expectation of high standards. As we go along in the course we do explain that we only use what we learn in the class when we are training and don’t take any of the things out of the studio.
With students in this age group we still focus on increasing their self-esteem side on the building of their confidence and again speak to them about the I CAN attitude and they can do anything that they set their mind too.
We have found that a lot of bullying goes on in high school so we continue to focus on what we believe is one of the most aspects of our training, anti-bullying!
Premier Martial Arts studios nationwide offer great support for parents in the development of happy healthy confident children with an amazingly positive winning attitude. Whether parents are looking for help with focus, confidence, self-esteem, fitness, self-defense, or character development, parents will find Premier Martial Arts training a great aid in helping them achieve their parenting goals.
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