Demonstration with Fun 4 Gator Kids

      Wow, I didn't realize it has been so long since I posted on this page. 
      Last Sunday, June 7th, we had a 3 hour demonstration/game playing session at Trinity United Methodist Church with Fun 4 Gator Kids.   It was mainly water stuff for the kids.  This was the Fun 4 Gator Kids School's Out For Summer Bash.   We didn't demonstrate as much as I was intending cause it was a more fun for the kids type day.   We showed them and let them play some of the main games we play at Aikido of Gainesville.  
   
    The kids loved playing the blind swordsman game that we have named Zatoichi.  There are lots of Japanese films and perhaps a seris of TV shows about a bind priest swordsman who goes around ridding places of bad guys by whacking them up.   Since it was outdoors and lots more sounds that made it hard to sense who was around the blindfolded person, we made it like the pool game Marco Polo.  When the blinded person said Zato, everybody else had to answer ichi.   It worked well and the kids had a ball with it. 
We had them using using a 2 1/2 foot pool noodle as the sword.

Luckily we had brought two of the pool noodles, so we let them have mock sword fights.   I refereed and stopped them at 10 strickes.   They had a ball with that game too!

Near the end we got some Aikido and weapons taking demonstrated.  I didn't notice when I was demonstrating that all kids were oohing and aahing when I took somebody in a high fall.  

It was a good day!