by Dominic Wells

Created on: September 07, 2008

Teaching children requires many of the same ingredients regardless of what is being taught. You should always think about the following things before beginning to teach anything to a child. Suitability, concept and most importantly, fun factor. There is a general rule of thumb for teaching children. There should be no learning without fun, and equally no fun without at least some aspect of learning!

As far as suitability goes, you don't want to throw every rule of soccer into the arms of a five year old who is just discovering the joy of kicking a ball. Equally, you don't want to limit a teenager to just kicking a ball about. It should be pretty easy to determine the content of the lesson or session based around this. Let's say you teach want to start teaching a toddler to play soccer. Chances are they will have, at some point, kicked a small ball already. This is great, for you can present them with a ball, let them have a kick around to get used to the weight and size of the ball, and then encorporate a small goal into the game. Make some goalposts out of spare coats/sweaters/cones, anything will suffice, and encourage the child to kick the ball between the posts. It's best to have no goalkeeper at this point, this allows you to demonstrate kicking the ball between the posts to the child, and allows them to experience it for themselves first. After a few attempts successful attempts though you should move between the posts yourself and up the ante of the game. The child will recognise the increased challenge and the fun factor should increase. Make sure you let 75% of the shots go in though, fall over, miss the ball, add comedy to your sub-par goalkeeping efforts. Don't let the child get de-motivated!
I'm sure most children will use bad technique at first, being unable to dribble the ball and kicking it with their toes, the famous "toe-punt". This is nothing to be concerned about for a beginner. As the child become more competent you can introduce a new technique or two, such as using the side of the foot to pass the ball - after-all, you don't always need to use a goal. Alongside the slow increase in technique, encourage the child to play with friends, take the child down to the park with a few friends and have a kick around or mini-game (depending how long they have been playing). Learning with friends is a great tool for teaching children anything, but especially sport. If it is possible, you could even take the child to see a match being played. They

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