gapshot

Hello everyone once again. Happy New Year. Got a question/ need some advice. I'm interested in starting an archery program for kids at our club here in mass. I'm not an instructer by any means but would like to do something get some kids interested in the sport. Any advice and or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Jim Robator

Arthur P

Have a kid's day at your club's range. Run an ad in the paper and invite parents to bring their kids out to the range on some weekend. Try to have a bunch of kiddie bows and a whole bunch of arrows available. Get as many volunteers from your club as you can to help the kids with their shooting and to supervise them. At least one volunteer for every two kids on the line is good.

Maybe hire a party clown to entertain the kids while they're waiting their turn to shoot. Or, maybe, have someone there doing demonstrations on making a selfbow, or making strings and arrows. If you've got a leatherworker, have him set up and make some armguards and tabs or something like that. Parents would be interested in watching those kinds of things too and, trust me, you don't want parents just dropping the kids off and leaving. So you need to have something to interest them as well.

In fact, it wouldn't be a bad idea to have some lightweight adult bows for the parents to play with too.

Get several bigbags of cheap balloons. Blow them up and pin them to the targets for the kids to shoot at. It'll make a mess on your practice range, but kids just love popping balloons with arrows. They'll get bored pretty quick if they're just shooting at paper targets but they never get tired of seeing the immediate results of a hit on a balloon.

We've done that several times at our club and always had a great time. Nothing like watching kids having a ball.

gapshot

Thanks Arthur. We do have a youth day which is a big hit with all the kids and parents for that matter. Inevitably there are several kids or parents that ask if we have anything during the summer months for the kids. In this particular case, archery. I was thinking of something to help kids who decide they want to learn a little more about archery but may not have an adult to teach them or keep them interested. We do have some equipment already. I guess I've just got to get organized and get the word out once I round up some other volunteers.

Jim Robator

untried_talent

you know what would get the adults ?fill some balloons with hellium and pin them to the targets.you know how those sparkelers never go out ?take off the field point and put the sparkler in until its about 4inches from the stuff that makes it spark.light it shoot it and iff it hits it will burst into flame and before you realize ithappened it will be out.that way nothing catches on fire.both kids(mostly teens)and parents will love it.