Ninja Warriors

Five and six-year olds are the most enthusiastic students. They love creativity and problem solving, which makes them ideal students. The problem is they are so good at following tasks, some teachers tend to treat them like their older peers. This is a problem since they do not have the basic skills necessary to keep up with children ages 7 and up. The solution is to provide them with a own program that targets their stage of development in a manner that adapts to their social and intellectual curiosity while at the same time building skills that set them up for success.

Here’s an overview for the stages of development of children ages 5 and 6:

• Physically – typically they do not know how to apply their muscles. They have a basic foundation for leg, arm, and core control, but they still lack a lot of strength.
  • We expect them to initially struggle with multiple techniques. We also expect them to initially have issues with techniques when exercising.
  • Our goals are to get them to perform repetitions of techniques and perform static, active, and dynamic exercises with good technique.
• Intellectually – they have a hard time remembering more than three commands. They also have a hard time distinguishing between their left and right.
  • We expect them to get confused when we ask them to do more than three things at one time. We also expect them to have an issue distinguishing between their left and right when following multiple-commands.
  • Our goal is to get them to remember three (or more) commands at once. We will also help them learn how to perform various combinations on both left and right sides.
• Emotionally – they focus on things that make them happy. They also have a hard time slowing down when they are excited.
  • We expect them to initially lose focus and shut down when they are not happy. We also expect them to lose control when they are over-excited.
  • The goal for our program is to help them focus even when it’s hard to do so. We will also help them control their body and their power, especially when they are excited.
• Socially – they love to play with others, but are typically very competitive.
  • We expect them to show poor sportsmanship when they participate in a competition.
  • Our goal is to help them build good teamwork, such as no cheating, not getting angry when they lose, and not to brag when they win.

Understanding the stages of development of 5 and 6-year olds, we focused in on 8 age-appropriate skills that make up the Ninja Warriors Program:

• FOCUS
• TEAMWORK
• CONTROL
• MEMORY
• BALANCE
• DISCIPLINE
• FITNESS
• COORDINATION

As student progress through their classes, they are learning all of the skills and techniques that are taught in both the Thunder Dragons and Family Classes. However, since 5 and 6-year olds learn these skills at a different pace, we have broken down the first 2 Family Class belt ranks into 6 belt ranks. This allows the students to see progress learning the basic skills without having to wait until all of the skills of each of these belts are mastered.

We use basic elements of traditional Martial Arts curriculums to build skills that are appropriate for 5 and 6-year olds. This means that your child will learn and grow at a pace that is not too easy, nor too challenging. The best part is that the Ninja Warriors program will equip your child with skills that they will utilize in every area of their life!