Hylah's Aikido Project

Alright, this is coming in non-sequential order, but I did want to just post a few comments on Hylah's research project. When Hylah started school this year, we were given an information packet describing some of the work and expectations from her teacher for her 3rd grade year. We were surprised to find that there was a research project due in December. This seemed like a lot of work for a 3rd grade class since it was supposed to show approximately 6-8 weeks worth of work and include some kind of oral presentation, but, apparently this teacher does this every year with her 3rd grade class.

Hylah has been taking Aikido now for a little over 2 years so Jane and I suggested Aikido as one possible topic since Hylah has access to a lot of information on the subject including her sensei and the other instructors and students at her dojo.

There were many obstacles in the way of completing this project, including birthdays (mine and Hylah's) and holidays (Halloween and Thanksgiving), not to mention the many lazy weekends in between that kept us from really putting 100% into this project for any focused period of time.

Mainly, we collected information and watched a few shows and read articles online about Aikido, but we hadn't really sat down to craft the presentation and the handout materials until the 4 days prior to the date of her presentation (they were all due on the 12th of December, but the teacher spread the delivery of the oral presentations throughout last week of school before the Christmas break).

Anyway, after a lot of time, effort, frustration, arguing, screaming, time-outs, stops and starts seasoned with a little confusion and doubt, we managed to hammer out a solid piece. Now, it was time to have Hylah rehearse the thing so that she was ready to give the presentation to her class. This proved to be difficult as Hylah was wrestling with a touch of nervousness (which is natural) and also as we didn't have a solid outline for her presentation until almost the last minute. Luckily we were able to enlist Nathanael (one of Hylah's instructors) to come to the presentation and help her with a short Aikido demo. This part proved to be a hit with the kids since Hylah flipped and pinned her instructor with some of her techniques in front of the whole class, teacher, school principal and whoever happened to be in the multi-purpose room at the time.

Aside from Hylah, being a little nervous and mumbling through a lot of the presentation, she did deliver all of the information that she wanted to and managed to get through the whole thing without messing up. For a first timer, she did surprisingly well.

All in all, the presentation was a success and Hylah received the highest marks possible on the piece as well as a lot of praise from her teacher and school principal.

(I think she probably increased enrollment at her dojo as well)