I wish all the kids were like this

Today was another day at the grind, so to speak. OK, it was a totally miscombobulated day. The network server went down, the MAN7 decided to rollback several updates for some bizzare reason on the Front Desk computer, but not the office computer (and I work on the Front Desk one), and I was given the task of doing a comparison of some lists, and not exactly knowing what I was supposed to be checking. Just awful! Throw in a Cubs class in the middle, and you have a day of disaster!

The saving grace of all this was that the Cubs class was only one little kid, and it was one of the students I had from my original class coming back. He had gone to Saturday classes for a while, as his grandparents, who take care of him during the week while his parents work, were travelling in the Phillipines, and couldn't take him to regular class time with me. So today he got back, and we had a great time. Little R was always a delight. He started out very quiet and shy, and I barely ever heard a word from him for most of the last cycle. But today, well, he wasn't a chatterbox, but he was certainly engaging in conversation and not being quite as shy for sure. For a 3 1/2 year old, he's quite poised, listens well, and takes direction well. Just a delightful child. I wish my own kid was half this pleasant! :-( The hard thing was that this was turning into a private lesson, as nobody else came today. So, what can you do to fill up a 1/2 hour class when there's only one kid? I think I only cut it short by 5 minutes, but I figured out how to do it. R learned how to do some knifehand strikes, and we also worked on muscle blocks (inner forearm blocks), as well as reviews punches, low and high blocks, and front kicks. I try to make it as fun as I can for the kid, and try to do things that encourage their imagination. For example, we are supposed to reach up high and stretch, reach low and to the sides, then do forward and back arm swings. Well, that's boring. Since we are supposed to be bear cubs, I make it so that we are gathering bear food for energy to do our exercises. So we gather fruit and honey from the trees, nuts on the ground, berries on the bushes to the side, and then we go swimming for fish and back to the shore. The kids seem to respond to that pretty well and enjoy being silly in "eating the food". And today, R was having a blast, and really doing very well. Like I said, he takes direction very well, and is just such a sweet child, that I made sure he got lots of paper starts. ;-)

If it weren't for little R today, today would've been a total writeoff. Now, if I could only influence Drew to act like this younger kid!