Discipline, Respect, and Focus

Trying on our new karate uniforms for the first time

Trying out a few moves that we learned

 

 

  Luke, Liam, and Aiden are all waving to me from the playground.

Discipline, Respect, and Focus.  Sounds good, doesn't it?  Not easy things for a four year old to comprehend.  Those are the "three rules" that they emphasize in Karate.  We are trying something new here.  We needed a new activity as the weather starts getting cooler, the days are shorter, and we begin spending a little more time indoors.  Above everything else, we want the boys to enjoy this activity and look forward to going, of course.  However, we hope it builds self confidence, strength, flexiblity, and those three key things mentioned above would be great too!  Aiden cannot participate until he is at least three years old and potty trained so he still has a few months.  The boys, however, were very excited about the idea of getting to wear the uniforms and try to get different colored belts.  Liam, of course, wanted to know when he could have the green belt and Luke is hoping for the purple belt.  We will see how it goes!

I am also posting one picture from school that I thought was rather funny and cute.  It is a picture of Luke, Liam, and AJ waving at me from the playground on the first day of school.  The schedule for school has not changed for Luke and Liam this year, but Aiden moved up into the preschool classroom rather than the "trasition toddler" classroom (which is right before preschool).  He was more than ready to move on and seems to enjoy school more now than he did before.  I think one of the primary reasons he loves it is because he gets to be on the bigger playground with his brothers!  He follows them around and does everything they do, of course.  When I would drop him off in the toddler room, he was usually a bit weepy and whiny, but when I drop him off in the preschool room he walks right in and never even turns back to say goodbye!  Wow, what happened?  Aiden's teacher said he is very smart for his age (we already knew this one) and he works very hard in class, sits in a circle nicely, and listens very well to instructions (I had to verify we had the same child on the last three).  Good job, Aiden!