Coaches How do I get kids ages 4-10 to listen and stay on task?!

[Cedesg]

I’ve been coaching for 5 years anywhere from preschool to competition team. I’m at a new gym that does things differently, instead of beginner,intermediate, advanced classes it’s by age ‍. They also want us to do all four events in an hour AANND teach them level 1 routines for “in- house meets”. My question is how do I go about this so I’m not exhausted in ever at I have never experienced this before, the kids just wanna have fun. I feel pressured to teach them skills/routines because it’ll reflect in a meet if I don’t but there rec kids…

 

[Aussie_coach]

Teaching skills and routines can be super fun for the kids if you make it fun.

Have little contests to see who can remember what comes next, who has the best knees etc.

Have your own in class Olympics as a practise competition and let them choose a country to represent.

Do routines to fun music. Write a bunch of different ways to do the routine (like super fast, super slow, with a silly grin, being over dramatic) on papers and have them pick them out of a hat. Doing these basic level 1 routines in different or even silly ways, is a good way to help them remember but also a good way to develop awareness of what different body parts are doing.

Play a game where one person starts the routine and the coach calls freeze and the next person jumps in their spot and carry’s on from the spot the last person left off.

Try doing the routines in sync with a partner or a small group.

Make sure you praise the things they do well. If kids feel like they are doing a good job, they will enjoy doing it.

 

[estamey21]

Ooof...grouping by age is an interesting challenge, considering that abilities can vary widely within a group. For a 15 minute class per event, I would probably structure the curriculum like so (assuming a 12 week session):

• [Week 1,2,3] Introduce all skills that will eventually go into a routine. Practice skills in a circuit.
• [Week 4,5] Introduce harder skill variants that students can try if they want to. Continue to practice skills in a circuit.
• [Week 6,7] Start piecing together basic routines: First half.
• [Week 8,9] Start piecing together basic routines: Second half.
• [Week 10,11,12] Practice full routines. Allow more advanced students to include harder skill variants if they have mastered the full basic routine.

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> the kids just wanna have fun. I feel pressured to teach them skills/routines because it’ll reflect in a meet if I don’t but there rec kids…

I'm sensing that you might need to adjust your expectations in order to survive at this new gym. The way your new gym structures their recreation program (group by age, hour-long classes, final exhibition), I'm assuming that they care more about fostering a positive social experience for gymnasts and care less about teaching high-quality, technically-accurate gymnastics. In other words, it's totally fine if the routines look like crap at the in-house meet. As long as the kids are having fun, that's all the matters. If for some reason your gym gives you a hard time about students performing poorly at the in-house meet, I would see this as a red flag and not a sign that you are a bad coach.

 

[Cedesg]

Teaching skills and routines can be super fun for the kids if you make it fun.

Have little contests to see who can remember what comes next, who has the best knees etc.

Have your own in class Olympics as a practise competition and let them choose a country to represent.

Do routines to fun music. Write a bunch of different ways to do the routine (like super fast, super slow, with a silly grin, being over dramatic) on papers and have them pick them out of a hat. Doing these basic level 1 routines in different or even silly ways, is a good way to help them remember but also a good way to develop awareness of what different body parts are doing.

Play a game where one person starts the routine and the coach calls freeze and the next person jumps in their spot and carry’s on from the spot the last person left off.

Try doing the routines in sync with a partner or a small group.

Make sure you praise the things they do well. If kids feel like they are doing a good job, they will enjoy doing it.

I love these ideas!

 

[Cedesg]

Ooof...grouping by age is an interesting challenge, considering that abilities can vary widely within a group. For a 15 minute class per event, I would probably structure the curriculum like so (assuming a 12 week session):

• [Week 1,2,3] Introduce all skills that will eventually go into a routine. Practice skills in a circuit.
• [Week 4,5] Introduce harder skill variants that students can try if they want to. Continue to practice skills in a circuit.
• [Week 6,7] Start piecing together basic routines: First half.
• [Week 8,9] Start piecing together basic routines: Second half.
• [Week 10,11,12] Practice full routines. Allow more advanced students to include harder skill variants if they have mastered the full basic routine.

---

> the kids just wanna have fun. I feel pressured to teach them skills/routines because it’ll reflect in a meet if I don’t but there rec kids…

I'm sensing that you might need to adjust your expectations in order to survive at this new gym. The way your new gym structures their recreation program (group by age, hour-long classes, final exhibition), I'm assuming that they care more about fostering a positive social experience for gymnasts and care less about teaching high-quality, technically-accurate gymnastics. In other words, it's totally fine if the routines look like crap at the in-house meet. As long as the kids are having fun, that's all the matters. If for some reason your gym gives you a hard time about students performing poorly at the in-house meet, I would see this as a red flag and not a sign that you are a bad coach.

Thank you very much, this motivates me for on coming weeks ! I love all these good ideas definitely will be trying. It is adjustive I have to make with how they do classes at this gym