You don’t need extensive knowledge of a sport to coach it to a team of little kids. You need to be a caring parent that has the basics down of the sport that you’re teaching. In fact, it can be worse if you know too much about a sport and you’re trying to teach kids everything that you know. Your lesson plans will be jumbled messes that even the smartest kids can’t understand. If you want to be successful with little kids you need to learn to simplify what you know.

Little kids will try their best to please adults, so they will say yes if you ask them if they understand. This can make gauging what kids know about a sport really hard for a coach. If you have doubts about what your team knows then just teach the basics. Even if other kids know about the basics you still need to teach at a basic level to everyone.  The kids that already know about the basics will be reinforced by your lessons and the kids that know nothing will have a fighting chance on the field.

If you are trying to teach kids about sports then you need to simplify all your lessons to the point where you take one look at your plan and understand it. If your lesson plan is hard to understand in any way, then how can you expect a little kid to get it? Just stick with the basics and don’t overdo it with rules or the kids might not have fun at practice. Rules can be the hardest thing that kids learn about in sports, so don’t dump a bunch of rules on little kids. When you see kids playing together and working towards a common goal you know you are doing your job.