Tennis for young kids

As a mother of 2 kids aged 4 and 2 I am constantly looking out for new ways of teaching them different kinds of sports to help them develop their coordination skills.

As I am a tennis instructor (I did not teach for a while because I was far to busy with bringing up the kids) I recently started to make a little tennis class for my 4 year old daughter and her 2 best friends. She was very excited to go to go to “real tennis training” and even more excited that her friends could come too and share the fun. My 2 year old son is participating too, but mainly on the side line collecting balls, but of course with his own raquet

Obviously at this age the ultimate goal should be that the the kids enjoy their tennis class and are not pressured to perform perfect skills. So it is very important to find the right mix of fun games and skill developing to keep the kids interested. I start my toddler tennis lesson with a quick warm up routine with different runnig styles followed by a “run and collect ball” competition.

The next challenge is to toss a ball and catch it again. It sounds so easy, but for a 3 to 4 year old this is a big coordination challange. Most of the times the toddlers and kids find it easier to bounce the ball on the court and catch it then. For the next exercise we grab the tennis raquets and try to balance the ball on it. Some kids will still need both hands to master this task successfully and some of them can even run through a track without loosing the ball. At this point I sometimes get out some balloons, which is extremely popular. Every child can now try to toss the balloon with the raquet as well as trying to hit it over the net. We even play doubles over the net with the balloon, so the kids develop a feeling for the ultimate goal of tennis.

Here is a very interesting article about how to teach tennis to young children.

Good luck and have fun!!