Buddy Day
So 1 1/2 weeks ago, on Thursday October 9th, I hosted our first Buddy Day. Now for those of you that don’t remember reading in my newsletter, A Cup of DoJoe, it’s basically a day that every student is allowed to bring one or two of their friends to Karate class!
It was a huge hit! I had about 25 people. Not everyone brought a friend, but some people brought two guests. It was somewhat choatic, but at the same time kinda organized.
I had a couple of my friends, Adam and Mike, help assist me during the class. They basically would walk around and correct kids to make sure they were doing their techniques with the right hand, or help out during games.
The format was as followed:
- We did about 20 minutes of Karate. Nothing too crazy or involved, since I want to keep the classes really positive and upbeat. Students learned some basic punches, blocks, and kicks. Essentially the stuff that I would teach all new incoming students.
- Than we played 3 games for about 20 minutes. The first one was ‘Dodge The Bullets’. No, we didn’t have pellet guns, rather we ended up throwing hand/focus pads at the kids trying to tag them out. We broke them into two groups, and had everyone line up in the middle of the floor. Than there were two people on each side of them about 15 yards away for the kids. We would throw the pads across the floor trying to tag them out. It was quite difficult too because ‘bullets’ were coming from both directions. There was also a relay race, that kinda drug on since the class was too big, so I’ll be sure not to use that game again. And, finally we played ‘Sensei Says’. It’s essentially the same thing as Simon Says, expect we do kicks and punches, and students need to wait until the instructor says Sensei Says…
- After games we all had pizza and drinks… juice drinks that is. :-) I ended up ordering pizza from Black Jack Pizza, since it’s really cheap, and every kid loves pizza.
It looked like the night was a big hit. I may end up getting 2-3 students out of it. If anything I’ll for sure get 1, which pays for the entire night of events. I’ll probably do Buddy Day 3-4 times a year, depending on how many students I have. It typically makes sense to have this event when one is getting new students, so that older students do not bring their same friends.