Are you listening?

The life skill for Monday’s camp was “active listening”.

Our guest teacher, Sifu Paul Marquez of Zakira Martial Arts, had a great game called “bellies, backs and push up”. The rules are simple. If he shouts out “bellies!” you go to your belly. If he shouts out “backs”, you go to your back. And if he shouts out “push up”, well… you get the idea.

From there, Sifu Paul taught us a neat drill that mixed chi-sao with 4 count street. It was a partner drill in which you took turns copying each other. At first, all that happened was you kept 6 feet away from your partner and just followed them. Then, he added a step so the leader threw a hand strike and the follower had to yield to the strike. Next, the follower copied the strike. It got super fancy when the leader did a spin and handed off the leader position to the follower… whew!

We tried out a couple of new (to us) games: sets and gauntlet. In sets, you pick three students that have something in common. Then the students try and figure out what makes the set. If they find something else (besides the trait you picked) that is similar, you acknowledge that but say “that wasn’t what I was thinking of.” The person to figure out the set gets to make up the new set.

For gauntlet, we made two rows of students. One student picks a strong emotion, like fear, anger or sadness. All the students except one then wear that expression on their face. Then, the lone student steps out and has to walk between the rows with a completely neutral face. If they make it through without giggling, they win. If they crack… we’ll they get to laugh and that’s worth something.