Skills

The didactic program for pre-school children (3 to 5 years old) is based on a series of games that let children acquire and consolidate certain skills, such as action, adaptability, moving in a certain space, facing other children, acquiring respect for the opponents, team spirit, respect for the rules, understanding the relationship between action and result. There are games of speed and attention, games of pulling and pushing, of conquering an object, of making lose balance, of immobilizing, of dodging, resisting, getting free. Then there are specific exercises to gain health, power, elasticity, balance, coordination and classical children’s games. All above is surrounded by a fairy tale context full of stories, animals, colours, fantasy and real characters, a world that only a child can give life to. These games eventually let children control their emotions, their momentary failures, let them become more active and autonomous. They can win or lose, or play altogether for a common purpose. The program follows children’s motivation, their creativity flux and their involvement, in order to let them enjoy this experience.

Dealing with aggressiveness

In some schools in Italy a research program took place to find out about the causes of mobbing between children. Then a program has been activated in order to educate to non-violence, a program based on martial arts. The experiment of the introduction of martial sports in the schools gave very good results, so that in Cesena the “Centre for non-violent information” was founded. “Fighting” makes part of most ancient cultures and through centuries it turned into nowadays sports. Often the very first ancestral way a child can find to get a toy or a territory is an aggressive behaviour towards other children. This violence belongs to a surviving instinct and manifests itself in the first socialisation experiences of a child, often consequently to  particular stress-generating situations. These violence manifestations are, in pre-school age, a way of communicating, until the child learns new ways to relate to others, in the efforts a child makes to define a socially acceptable behaviour. Nonetheless, violence mustn’t be repressed, but limited by precise times, places and rules. TV violent images risk to influence a child’s behaviour in a negative way, therefore they should be limited. Martial sports let pre-school children  channel their aggressive energies in a limited space/time within specific rules, in a context of respect towards other children.

Outcome of year 2006/07

Five children from 3 to 5 years took part to the course. During the year exercises were proposed gradually. While they were getting more and more able to understand the rules of the games, we started doing more complex games and exercises. Also children’s physical reaction improved during the year, so we were eventually able to perform exercises we hadn’t practised at the beginning. Children were satisfied when they could execute new exercises they hadn’t managed to perform earlier, becoming more self-confident. The method used during the year was based on keeping the exercises and games that were successfully followed by the children in that specific moment, otherwise we shifted to other games straight away, in order not to bother them with our adult’s expectations but to involve them spontaneously. The general atmosphere of the course was enthusiastic and enjoyable, due both to the children’s emotional reaction to the games and to the free expression of different personalities, that was also a source of inspiration to create new games.