Our experience with our 3-year old son in Capoeira class has generally been very positive. He is enthusiastic. He enjoys it. He particularly likes running around and practicing a few of the poses that they have learned (eg, "the crab" and "the bear"). He also seems to be getting pretty good at doing high kicks and dropping into the Capoeira defensive posture (crouched down, arms bent at the elbows and held on either side of the head to block kicks/punches). The music is rhythmic and fun.
Our hope is that the class also helps teach him listening skills. This isn't an easy skill to acquire, especially since he doesn't attend a class on a daily basis. Sometimes the instructor is tough to follow from a 3-year old perspective, and is teaching more complex moves to the 5-year-olds in the class. And if it gets too hard to follow, our son is creative and will do his own thing. We think that creativity is an important quality to develop. But, that can get disruptive in a martial arts class with many 3-5 year olds, which depends on maintaining some semblance of discipline.
So, we've been talking to our son before getting to class about how he's going to listen to the teacher, he's going to follow instructions, it's important to do that, etc, etc. This seems to work pretty well. But if we asked the instructor, he'd probably say that this hasn't entirely resolved things.
On balance, we think our son is getting something out of the experience. We'd recommend it, and we're likely to continue the activity. That said, this raises a broader question about classes that are offered to kids in multiple age ranges. 3-5 doesn't seem like a big spread, but the attention span and ability to process and carry out complex instructions seems to be pretty different in a toddler who just turned 3 and a child either about to -- or actually in -- kindergarten.
--TC Daddy
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