Ninja Training

My first teen event of the summer took place a few days ago, it was a success! The teens were invited to sign up for Ninja Training, where they would do a series of physical challenges designed to test their endurance, accuracy, balance, agility, and speed. Several of the activities (though not all of them) were taken from a similar program idea posted by the California Library Association. The rest of the activities were of my own design.

I asked teens to sign up ahead of time (that's kind of our policy for summer events), but I was willing to be flexible regarding sign-up with this program. I ended up with twelve teens in attendance, which actually turned out to be the perfect number. I divided the teens into four teams of three. Everyone would receive points for completing the physical challenges and the team with the most points at the end of the program went home with a small prize.

As the teens arrived, I directed them to a table where they could make name tags. I had also found a chart online with a chart for creating your "ninja name" and asked that the teens give that a try (do a Google Image search for "ninja name" to find the chart that I based mine off of - I just basically reformatted it and added some instructions to the top).


Next I gave the teens about 15 minutes to try their hand at making origami ninja stars. I had printed off some written instructions and walked around to help as needed. Click here to see my favorite set of instructions for making the paper shuriken. Be warned that it doesn't print out well - the pictures take up a ton of space, and the website formatting adds several pages of sidebar to the beginning that aren't necessary. But the number of pictures makes it easy for a beginner to follow the instructions.


After folding the ninja stars, I challenged the teens to test their accuracy. I gave them each five paper ninja stars (I pre-folded several so I would not have to rely exclusively on the ones the teens made) and had them stand ten feet away from a box placed on a table. Each teen would receive one point for each shuriken what made it in the box. I set up two tables and two boxes, so I could have two teens competing at once. If I could do this again, I'd have them stand a bit closer to the target so that they would have an easier time with this activity - it's really hard to be accurate when throwing paper objects.

Next on the agenda was a test of endurance - hula hooping. The teens earned more points the longer they were able to keep the hoop up and moving - five points if they lasted 15 seconds, 10 points if they lasted 30 seconds, and 15 points if they lasted a whole minute. I had four hula hoops, so one person from each team was able to try it at once.

After hula hooping we tested our balance by walking with books on our heads. Just as with the shuriken, I had two teens trying this activity at once. I used masking tape to create start and finish lines spanning the short length of the room (roughly 25 feet). Teens earned 10 points if they were able to make it all the way across the finish line, and a bonus five points if they could turn around and come back.

To finish off the program we constructed an obstacle course. This was the part of the program everyone had been waiting for! To complete the course the teens had to hop through the hula hoops...


...crawl under two tables...


...climb over two step stools...


...and finally walk across a balance beam made of 2x4s.


This was a fairly short course, but in the room we were in we didn't have space for anything bigger. I timed each teen as they ran through the course and gave them points based on their speed - 25 points for finishing in less than 15 seconds, 20 points for finishing in 15-30 seconds, etc. The teens generally finished faster than I expected, and if I could do this program again I think I'd give points in 10-second intervals instead of 15-second intervals. They had lots of fun running the course, and this proved to be the most popular part of the program.

Overall I'd consider this program a great success. The teens seemed to have fun with the challenges and it sparked a little friendly competition. All told the program took about an hour.

Variations of this program that I considered but did not (for various reasons) implement:

1) Do it outside! Take advantage of nice weather. The extra space also allows for a longer obstacle course, and if supplies are available two courses could be set up and run competitively. Makes doing the origami rather difficult though on account of the wind.
2) Get a local martial arts teacher to do a demonstration. This eats up time that could be spent doing physical challenges, but I think it would be an appealing presentation.
3) Talk a bit about the role of the ninja in Japanese culture/history. Show off some weapons. Would take a bit to research to get this information right, but could be cool. It's possible that a martial artist/instructor might be able to do something with this as well.

I might use this program idea again in the future. There was also a bit of interest in the program from younger kids as well, and I think it would be easy to addapt some of these activities for kids.