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episode 40 season 1
Extra Curricular Activities from golf, to swimming, to basketball, cycling, to bowling and photography…What’s your preference? This week on Valerie’s Vareiety Podcast we are talking sports and extra curricular actives for your kids and maybe even you! I’m your host Valerie Moss…Enjoy the episode.
What do you have your kids in for extra curricular activities? From gymnastics, to soccer, hockey, swimming, golf – what’s you or your kids activity preference and why?
Gymnastics
London’s quite a small girl and has always been so we thought gymnastics would be good to build up those core mussels and balance in the younger years. She was in gymnastics for about 4 years with back to back sessions. Not competitive but still skill driven and building endurance, balance and passion for the sport. We took her to Flip Factory just off 4 street NE. She went consecutively with her friend Sophie until recently as plans change people moved life adjusts. We noticed many benefits of Gymnastics, for one it provided her the agility and 2 strength that has benefited her with her other sports.
Gymnastics is a good basis for any sport as it gets you familiar with your muscles, posture and power. When you are small, these things matter even more.
Karate
In Valerie’s Variety Podcast Episode 5 we caught a robber in our garage – we came upon him and chased him down the back alley – it was un-nerving and scary. this lead to a renewed discussion about Karate for London. She’s so petit we wanted her to build confidence, strength and learn to defend herself. We purged forward in getting London into karate, subsequent burglar noted event!
This is the second activity she is in…she’s committed to it, still a white belt but moved up from ‘chops’ and is purging forward to get her yellow belt, And since I take her every week, instead of sitting and facebooking, working or listening to podcasts I’ve decided to join in on this amazing sport. Yes at my age and being a female I wanted to show by example and get into shape also. plus maybe learn a skill or two, and hopefully defend myself along the way – honestly I hope I never need to put this to the test. Plus I think it’s something good that we can do togehter, she’s pretty proud of this – we’ll see how it unfolds.
Where and how much $
This particular class on Thursday nights held in Mount Pleasant Community Rec Centre is ran by a husband and wife team. They are incredible and made me feel at ease making this decision. Part of the acku All Canadian Karate Union (http://www.acku.org) practicing the Traditional Skokotan Karate in Alberta and British Columbia. What’s nice about belonging to this club is you can train at any of the facilities and training clubs around the city – it’s part of your monthly fees. And at $55/person or $95/family of two or more that’s a pretty good rate for 2 classes per week or as many as you can fit into your shedule…
Do you or would you take any classes with your kids? There’s a parent in this karate class that has two kids involved in it as well. One thing is, when you’re in class with your children you are separated, and as a result you are not the parent during class time. The Sensai has control as the instructor. So that’s a nice break also. But I do like being in this class with London, she has 7 months of experience into this than I do so she feels very knowledgeable and shows me things – I love it!
One of my clients believes that team sports is the only way to go. You need to be a team in life you need to keep your ‘bench’ full he would say. Growing up I wasn’t into sports but I worked from a young age, therefore I proved to be a good team player. What about you? We have friends/family that live through their kids sports, hockey and soccer plus baseball and golf. To me, that’s just a bit too much for these small people, alternatively if it works for you, then great!
Swimming
We signed her up for swimming to continue her lessons and master this life skill. Swimming is a necessity of life and an important strength to have. We traded gymnastics for swimming. Swimming has been a success! She passed her Swimmer 1 with flying colours, now onto Swimmer 2. We attend the Killarney Swimming Pool on Saturdays mid morning and the class is approx. 45 mins, take a listen.
Why Swimming
Spending summers at the lake, vacationing in places with oceans and pools and travels to hotels with pools has pushed us to ensure London has the training and skills to be a good, safe swimmer with confidence. Do your kids swim? Are you a swimmer? As we sit in the pool viewers area and watch the adults take lessons, we thought wow good on them for pushing their limits and learning something new. Learning a new skill and showing your vulnerability is a lessen in modesty. I wish them all the luck and courage to get through this.
A lession in trust
As a side story, there was this little munchkin being brought to class by her momma, she was resisting major big time. Jeff and I sat in the viewers corner watching. This timid girl was running back to the entry into the change rooms, peeking out to her momma and shaking her head no-way am I going! She then would walk out to her momma and take the scene in again, pondering. The mom eventually handed the child to the teacher.
…the child was continuously resisting – yelling out,”momma I have to tell you something…” momma please I just need to tell you something…oh man it just tested the parenting reactions, I was almost in tears ready to hear what she needed to tell her momma – whatever it might have been. Her momma was just sitting up the bench from me…respecting the teacher reassurances with her daughter. The teacher kindly but firmly brought the child into the water – with full resistance but just the first couple of times, then the fear facing child was settled in and as a result took her lesson.
Try something new
I encourage you to try something new, if I can start Karate at 41 what could you start. A language class, an art class, or join your kids lesson.? I did my research for this decision by asking the Sensai to help me. As a result, she and her daughter started at the same age as we are, this solidified my decision. Anyway, good luck to you when you do decide to join a class and let me know what you decide.
In Closing
In closing, thanks for listening today on Sports and Extra curricular activities not just for our kids, but certainly, for us as well! Thank you, it sure means a lot that you’ve chosen this podcast as part of your favourites! I love that. Please take a second to rate me and tell a friend to spread the word.
The intro and outro is by London Moss, the music for this episode is Upbeat Hi-Hat Topper. I recorded the background loops of swimming and karate.
The sound effects I chose today are:
- Golf Hit
- Jumping in the pool
- Basketball dribbling
- bicycle coasting
- Bowling strike
- camera shutter
- record player scratching
- Arabic, Chinese, French, German and Spanish numbers
I wrote and produced this show plus design the cover art for this episode through Adobe Spark.