Being of English background and born in the United Kingdom, S grew up playing real football (soccer for us Australians) from a young age and was/is surrounded by football fanatics - his grandfather even played professionally for the QP Rangers. His family team going back a million generations is Manchester United and he's even got me interested in and backing the sport. So with this in mind, it makes sense that S would want his our son to follow in his footsteps and family tradition.
Knowing this, I have been investigating options for E from various ages with football clubs and affiliates and came across Little Kickers....
www.littlekickers.com.au
Little Kickers Australia is Australian owned and operated. Using ground-breaking techniques devised in the UK in 2002, Little Kickers has been a global success story...and has now arrived Down Under to benefit our Little Aussies.
At Little Kickers the focus is very much on fun - a national network of informal yet professionally run training classes where enthusiastic boys & girls (18 months – 7th birthday) are given a helping hand to stand on their own two feet.
Of course we believe that a head start in sport is a fantastic investment in the future and naturally we’d be as pleased as punch if any of our former pupils go on to greater glories in the golden game.
However Little Kickers is not a guaranteed passport to soccer fame! The real goal of Little Kickers, is to use soccer as a fun forum to instil our growing squad with a little extra confidence, co-ordination, control and sense of camaraderie; which we feel will stand them in very good stead for the future.
As you can see, children can start classes at just 18 months (E is 20 months old) and our local option is very conveniently located to home with classes that coincide with E's daily schedule and also with S' day off.
Wondering if it was actually worthwhile at such a young age or just another way to waste money on children's extracurricular activities, I sent S and E along to a free trial lesson yesterday. I gave S strict instructions to observe carefully and make sure E was responding well to the lesson plan/activities and that it was enjoyable - no point enrolling him and paying all that money if it was just going to be him playing independently with a ball as S can just take him to the park to do that.
Well after 45 minutes S took a happily exhausted toddler home for a big nap and declared the Little Kickers program a success where E was concerned. Not a huge emphasis on playing with the ball itself, Scott said it was more about having the children follow and understand instructions and he felt E responded really well and could learn a lot in terms of skill and discipline from ongoing lessons.
Given with my maternity leave coming up, we were planning to drop E back to one day only in kindy (he will still have a day with each of his grandmothers as well) and find a playgroup to join, the Little Kickers lesson will fit in well with giving him another structured activity to add to swimming and we can renew it on a term by term basis. I also love that its something S and E can share together as he did with his father growing up in addition to developing his coordination, fitness and even confidence. And hey, if it leads to him one day being the next Beckham, Ronaldo or Rooney, I certainly won't be complaining ha ha.
