Parks and Rec: Introduction to Archery Class

On Saturday morning, Munchkin was still feeling under the weather, but she really wanted to at least try to make it through the archery class that we had scheduled through the local parks and recreation. She had been waiting for a couple of months to take this class, and she was rather excited about it. She’s be interested in archery for a while now, but I hadn’t been able to find anything that would allow her to try it out before making a commitment to it. When I found this one day class, I knew that it would give Munchkin the opportunity to see if archery was truly something that she wanted to persue. The class was scheduled from 8:00 am to 11:00 am, so she figured that she’d be able to make it through those few hours of instruction and practice.

Thankfully, we experienced cooler weather on Saturday morning. (While other parts of the country are experiencing cold weather, we’ve still been in the 90s.) Unfortunately, the instructors did not start the class on time. In fact, they decided to wait 25 minutes for stragglers to roll in before starting class. Needless to say, that did not make Munchkin, Daddy, nor I very happy. 🙁 When the instruction finally began, we quickly saw that some of the instructors were clearly more knowledgeable then others, and some instructors were much better at the actual teaching. As the morning progressed, the lack of organization (and inconsistency) was rather apparent to D and I.

Even with the frustrations that we had with the delay of start time (and thus loss of 25 minutes of instruction and practice), the disorganization, and inconsistent instruction, the class was serving it’s purpose for Munchkin. She was able to shoot the bow and gauge whether it was something that she wanted to pursue further. She did enjoy the shooting aspect of the course. The way the course was run – well – not so much. Granted, D and I have high expectations when it comes to instruction, so I’m sure that some of that expectation has rubbed off on our girl. lol!

By the time 11:00 rolled around, the temps were warmer and many of the kids were restless. They ended the class on time even though they started it really late. The good thing is that Munchkin walked away with the knowledge that she did like archery and that she wanted to really learn more. For that reason, I was grateful for the class being offered. Because we don’t have any youth archery clubs in the area, this means that we’ll be working on this as a family. I plan on using a combination of the Olympic Archery in Schools and National Archery in Schools programs to put together a curriculum for Munchkin to dig into archery. We’ll see where it leads us….