juggling age??
Tim McKenzie
learn how to juggle?? I mean is there an actually statistic on this..
i mean what is a good age to start 3 ball cascade.. or scarves for that
matter... Any help in this regard would be highly appreciated...
Tim M
Thomas Löfqvist
catch and aren't too impatient, then you're old enough to have a go at it.
You should probably be able to take easy to understand verbal instructions
but it would be interesting to witness someone learning it merely by a
'monkey see, monkey doo' method.
Thomas Löfqvist
Jeff Benzon
I'd start your kids as soon as they leave the womb.
Jeffrey
Gofis...@aol.com
Ziyx
Roger W. C. Hansen
Based on the few children who come to our juggling club,
I would say that they have to be about 8 or 9 to have
a reasonable chance of success. Children vary a lot in
this regard. It is not uncommon for an 8 year old to
catch on better than a 9 year old. The younger ones
have neither the motor coordination nor the attention
span. This doesn't make them bad. It just means they
are probably not ready yet. The amount of time you
have to spend with them can also make a difference.
Having a parent who juggles and is a role model
probably helps a lot. Having a parent who is willing
to spend a lot of time being patient with them may help.
I would say with a lot of patience and work, you might
be able to shift this age a year or two. Generally, it
is a lot easier to just wait and let them entertain
themselves in other ways for a while.
Andrew Conway
says...
> [...]
> I would say that they have to be about 8 or 9 to have
> a reasonable chance of success.
This is true in most cases. Sometimes the combination of a young child
with an exceptional attention span and a good coach can result in a lot
of early progress. Albert Lucas was juggling five balls before his sixth
birthday, and Anthony Gatto a few weeks after his sixth.
--
Andrew
Eric Bagai
This is probably more about the subject than you want to know, but it
interests me, and there are other things that writing this will allow
me to avoid for a while, so here:
The basic element is, of course, the muscular ability to throw and
catch. At base, this is the hands' ability to close on an object upon
contact, and to release an object near the top of an arc segment
described by the arm and wrist. This begins to be physically possible
in humans at around three months of age, depending on raw physical
growth and health.
But wait, there's more! The hand needs to be coordinated with the arm
and both guided by a good deal of experience in the behavior of
falling objects, and the more complex behavior of objects of various
weights and sizes when accelerated and released, and their associated
probable ballistic characteristics. That is, throwing, and the
entirely different physical and cognitive act of catching.
This experience has to be built up from the most elementary
observations of the movement of one's own body, and how it effects
other objects. For many of us this starts with observing and making
causal associations between the behavior of our body, and the behavior
of the dangly mobile thingy that hangs above our crib. There are an
incredible number of recognitions, associations, extrapolations, and
related physical experiments that must be conducted and evaluated to
get from that making the dangly thingy move to juggling three objects
in a cascade.
Piaget and later theorists have made a big point of the idea that each
developmental step has to be learned well enough to be assimilated,
that is, to be made part of everyday unthought behavior and to become
an automatic assumption about the nature of things. This means that
many of the steps leading up to any given degree of competence have to
be forgotten/assumed/unconscious. E.g., you don't think about
balance, muscular contraction, position in space, and proprioceptive
feedback when you walk, but you can't walk without all of them and a
great deal more being done, all with a literally unthinkable amount of
coordination and precision. At one time in your development each of
those elements had to be dealt with consciously. All billions and
billions of them. But to walk with any grace now, you had best not
need to think of them. Even trying to be aware as many as you can of
them while you are doing it can make you go bump-a-nose, or pee your
pants because you stopped paying attention to the important things in
life, depending on how your parents raised you.
If they grow up in a nonrestrictive environment with lots of examples
of people throwing and catching things in lovely patterns, most kids
will learn to throw and catch an object in the air by age three. By
four, kids in such a rich environment can learn this bilaterally.
Five-year-olds who have not been raised in this environment might be
able to throw and catch with either hand if they were stark raving
geniuses in this particular aspect, maybe. Other kids need not apply
until age seven, at which time most kids can learn to juggle if
provided with a good teacher and the right equipment and enough time.
(One doesn't have to actually know all this stuff or be able to put it
into words, but one must be aware of it experientially, at least, and
be able to recognize developmental signs and indications in others
whether they know it or not, to be a good teacher to seven-year-olds
or handicapped or inexperienced kids or adults of any age. Merely
being able to juggle isn't enough.)
All of us learn to teach juggling by rote. Using cookbook techniques
and hand-me-down phrases to get others through the basics that we long
ago mastered. But the more you teach, and the more you pay attention
to what works, and when it works, and when it doesn't, the more you
get an idea of what is going on here, and can improve your technique.
As I said, it helps to have a theoretical and linguistic framework to
arrange these observations neatly, but it's not required.
By age nine, almost any kid should be able to learn a cascade from
anyone who can provide a clean example and break it down by number of
balls thrown, or by exchanges, or by visual or auditory pattern, or by
some other systematic approach, and not otherwise get in the way too
much. If you think it is easy to not get in the way of someone else's
learning, try to remember how your elementary school teacher
introduced you to poetry, and note how much of it you've read for
pleasure since then.
And if the object is to learn ball juggling as soon as possible, I
think scarves suck. Otherwise, scarves are interesting things to use
and gain experience and competence with. But scarf juggling requires
entirely different arm movements and grasps than does juggling balls
or beanbags. I much prefer SuccessBalls from SporTime, also available
at Serious Juggling. And they're cheaper than scarves, too.
Hope that helps.
=Eric
#41 . . . though this one is closer than most.
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Chris Cartier
"Jeff Benzon" <gofis...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:Lq%i6.5124$wf.16...@news1.epix.net...
> Gatto juggled 3 balls at age 3, 4 at age 4, and 5 at age 5.
That was actually Lucas, Gatto didn't start juggling till he was 6.
> I'd start your kids as soon as they leave the womb.
Good advice =)
Chris
> Jeffrey
> Gofis...@aol.com
>
>
>