Submitted by Derek Sandstrom, York Haven, Pennsylvania

Idea posted December 3, 2002

First, I use flutophones, so we do Flutophone Karate. But, that's not very creative. What I do that makes things interesting is to assign a point value for each belt (white = 1, yellow = 2, orange = 3, and so on). Then, as each kid earns belts of whatever color, s/he is also contributing to a class score with the points.

Every week, I have the latest scores announced, and I keep a running total on the Flutophone Karate bulletin board. I know Karate in its purest form is not about competition, but this seems to keep some of my kids interested where they might not have been before.