Taekwondo Day Camp: Day One

On Monday, July 11, 2011, I joined my eight-yar-old daughter, Samantha, and my six-year-old son, Jason, for a five-hour day of taekwondo day camp. We arrived at the dojang at 9:00 am. We warmed up with some jumping jacks and some pushups. Colin lead the stretching, and they we divided up into four teams. Instructor Eric called out Monique, Claire, myself, and my eight-year-old daughter Samantha as team captains. There were four students on each team. Jason (age 6), Jacob (age 9) and John (age 10) were on my team. We received a green sheet of poster board, so we were known as the green team. We also received four colored sheets o construction paper. We each drew a picture on our sheet of construction paper and pasted it to our poster board. Then, Instructor Eric mounted the poster to the wall and that spot in the room became our team base. The poster board would also be used to record our team points for the week.

Then we faced off in a soccer tournaments. Two players from each team faced off for one minute. Then we rotated in other players. My green team won our first game against Claire's white team. Jacob and John played well together, and so did Jason and I. I also tried pairing Jason with Jacob and then with John, but neither of those pairings worked out very well. Then, Samantha's blue team lost to Monique's yellow team, so we played the yellow team - and we won again! Then Samantha's blue team won a match against Claire's white team. Instructor Eric said we are going to continue with tournament play liek that each day, and at the end we will be awarded points for our team. I'm not sure why we were not awarded the points each day, but I'm sure it will make sense before the end.

After soccer, it was time to do some reading. Each students was asked to bring a book. Two students forgot, so they were set to work reading the student manual. That did not really hold their attention very well. My son Jason had some trouble in that he has not yet learned to read, so he wanted me to read his book to him. I thought that would be hard to do without bothering everybody else, but it didn't matter. He wasn't listening any way, so I was able to read to him VERY quietly.

After reading, it was time for kicking drills. We paired off and held targets for each other. I was paired with Claire. We practiced front kick, face-high front kick, round house kick, face-high round house kick, and axe kick.

Finally - lunch. I think I might better eat a bigger breakfast tomorrow, so I don't get so hungry before breakfast. The lunch break was one hour. It didn't take most of the kids an hour to eat their lunch, but it was important that we didn't get right back into it so that our food could digest a bit, and we didn't end up vomiting all over the dojang (yuk). So Instructor Eric had us lie down for nap time on the mats. It soon became painfully evident that I was in a room with mostly 10-year-old boys. Everyone thought it was incredibly hilarious to make snoring, burping and farting noises. :rolleyes: Instructor Eric was kept pretty busy taking care of the trouble makers.

After lunch it was time to work on our blocks and punches. Everyone was able to earn lots of points for their team during this activity. John was the star of my team. He performed the entire punching sequence quickly, powerfully and without any errors.

And finally, the very last 30-mnutes of camp, we received our brand new foam nunchucks! We lined up and spaced ourselves out so we wouldn't hit each other, and Instructor Eric started teaching us the first nunchuck form: spin-down, spin-up, figure eight, over-the-head, one-hip, the other hip, and KIHAP! It was surprisingly difficult, but tons of fun. I can't wait for tomorrow!