1st TKD Tournament

This was last weekend at the Park Institute TKD Tournament. The main headquarters is in Rochester, MN but they have a bunch of satellite locations in MN and WI, juts like the location we go to in Frbo. 

Here is Henry with the 2 boards he broke during his board breaking tournament. They compete against same rank or near same rank belts. White and yellow stripe competed against each other in this tournament. He did a really awesome job breaking the boards with a front snap kick and ended up placing 1st in that. He was really proud of that. That was the 2nd event he competed in that day.

Here is Henry waiting to find out how he places. Dr. Chou, who is our 4th Dan Master at our location is the gentleman behind Henry. He wasn't one of the judges for this one, just the announcer (or whatever they call it), but there are 4 other black belts that are the judges.

Here are just some of the individuals lined up waiting to enter the ring to compete. They bring them in different groups, so there are still a lot of other people waiting in another room for their groups time to come out and compete. They had the opportunity to choose to compete in 1-3 events (Form, Board Breaking and Sparring). We haven't purchased the sparring equipment yet but will be soon. He doesn't need it for this rank and testing, but I think once he becomes a yellow belt he will need it and it is part of future testings. 

He got 2nd place in Form. He was doing so good and something distracted him towards the end of his form then he turned the wrong way, which then cost him points. It was the first event he competed in and was VERY nervous. But once he got that one out of the way, he was more mentally prepared for the 2nd one of board breaking.

It was super hard to take a picture fast enough of him kicking and breaking the boards. What you see here in the picture below is after be broke the board and you can kind of see that mans hands are facing closer in because the board was broken and he was no longer holding a straight board.

His next belt test is January 6th, as long as weather and health are cooperative. He is all set for it already because it is the form he was working on for the tournament and he has memorized the things he needs to know for this testing including the Tae Kwon Do Pledge and the Tenets of TKD and what the meaning of his form and belt is. And know his kicks he needs to demonstrate for this test, so now he just waits and goes to class to practice. Sister is super busy with basketball and swimming that TKD took a back seat, but she will be back practicing again in March. Hopefully Henry will test again in March and then he will be 2 belts ahead of sister and she knew that was what would happen. 

He is really enjoying TKD and is super in to it and has his goals set to get his black belt by Junior High, hopefully.

Basketball Season has started

 Basketball actually started last Saturday but because Henry had a Taekwondo tournament he is starting this Saturday. I believe there is 14 second graders doing the program so there must be a couple missing today from their practice. This is a program run through our school and these are all second graders at our school.

This year they got smaller balls for the younger kids to do which I think is wonderful because they are better able to keep control of their ball and shoot it because it isn't too heavy and big for them.

This program is 8 Saturdays between December and mid February. He will be able to get to 6 of the 8 because he has Taekwondo events like the tournament last weekend and in January he will have testing for his next belt and probably will have to leave in the morning during this practice time.

In January he will be doing a different basketball program on Monday and Wednesday nights in a neighboring community. January will be quite busy with sports for him as he will have two nights of basketball and this year there will be a winter soccer program at the Shattuck Dome where they get to play inside and he is quite excited to play in the dome. That will be 8 Tuesdays in January and February, leaving just Thursday for him to do Taekwondo.

Junior Achievment (JA)

I taught a 5-week program in Henry's class this fall called Junior Achievement. It is a financial literacy program and is taught in schools by volunteers. I taught his class in Kindergarten, 1st grade (plus another 1st grade classroom last year) and now 2nd grade this year. The kids seem to enjoy the program and learn a lot from it and Henry enjoys having mom come in to volunteer.

2nd Grade Christmas Concert

So, another concert in the books. Try not to laugh too hard when you watch the first video. He had light shining right in his eyes and he looks like he is having a seizure or something. I was surprised he wasn't in the back row. It definitely did NOT seem to be arranged by height when in the past 2 years when it was a different music teacher.

There were some people with fat heads in the way of my taping. Ugh. So I had to be this close or it would block out half the kids. He is still blinking a lot, but not quite as dramatic as the 1st song.




And then in this last one you can't even see him since they combined 2nd & 3rd grades, so I guess you can just listen to it if you want or not....Whatevs.....