Primary 1a and 1b had a fantastic afternoon of Karate. Some of us have already experienced Taikwondo or Karate before, and we were keen to show off our skills.

We found out that Karate is a Japanese sport.

We began by learning how to say hello in Japanese. They are very formal. To say hello, they bow, with their hands at their sides and their feet together. The more important the person, the lower we bow. So of course, we all bowed very low to our teachers!

We then learned how to count to 5 in Japanese.

1 – ish

2 – ni

3 – san

4 – chi

5 – go

We then learned different ways to punch and kick correctly, so as not to hurt ourselves. (Of course, we learned that this is just a sport, and only to be done in safe environments, such as in karate or taikwondo classes).

We learned a forward punch – it is important to keep our thumb tucked away, punch in a straight line, and use the top part of our first 2 fingers.

We learned to a head block and a side block (to stop others punching us).

We then learned something called a slap kick – we don’t use the bottom of our foot or our toes, as this would hurt. Instead, we use the top part of our foot.

We practiced all of these on punching pads, held only by the instructors. We then got a go at using the pretend man called Bob. This was fun as he was very squishy and wobbled a lot.

We also had lots of fun playing games. These games were to help us get fit, and to exercise our muscles. We played an opposites game. We found this tricky at first but eventually got the hang of it. If the man said sit, we had to stand. If he said fight, we had to dance.

We then played a dice game. The dice had different exercises on it, including crunches, push ups, star jumps and squats. There was even a side which got the teachers to do 25 exercises! Luckily it only landed on this once. It was very funny watching Mrs Baty trying to do 25 push ups! She’s not as fit as us.

We had a really fun day, and we’re looking forward to the rest of the week.

We have had a fantastic day today !

What have we been up to ?

This morning we took a walk up to the ‘Range Park’.  Some of us had already been before so we were already familiar with it.  For some of though, it was our first time there and we were amazed when we saw all of the super things there.  What did we see ?

a  flying fox

a climbing wall

a roundabout

a chute

an obstacle course

a trampoline

a roundabout

and lots of lovely green grass and sand for us to run around on.  

We all had lots of super fun running around and using the equipment. It was really great !  We arrived back to school just before lunchtime having walked back.  Mrs Macdonald and Mrs Baty agreed that because we walked up and down to the park we didn’t have to do our ‘Daily Mile’ back at school.  Phew !!!!

In the afternoon we had a visit from a nurse ! She told us lots of super things about our body and what we can do to keep ourselves strong and healthy.  She also showed us what a heart looks like and told us how important it is to exercise.  We learnt that children’s hearts should beat between 80-120 beats per minute.  We also learnt how important it is to wash our hands.  It was a very informative visit.  Thanks so much toMrs Purves for giving up her time to talk to us.

A big thank you also to Freya and Tavia’s mummy, Wiktoria’s mummy and Thomas’s mummy for coming along to the park this morning to help us.