"Bimnastics"

This is Alyssa's way of saying "gymnastics". She started taking gymnastics in September at Grand Rapids Gymnastics and she absolutely loves it.

When we started in the fall, she took the Parent and Tot class, which meant that one of us accompanied her each night and helped her do the different activities. It was a nice small class, only five other little girls, and she was the oldest. Her coach told us at the end of the class that she was ready to move on to Tumble Bugs 1, so she started that in January. She loves being a "big girl" and going to class all by herself.

There are two Tumble Bugs classes going on at the same time, and I think there are 7 or 8 kids in Alyssa's class. They do all sorts of fun things in the class to develop their gross motor skills, balance, coordination, and social skills. The do stretches and play games (Duck duck goose, freeze, etc.), but they do all sorts of activities on the equipment as well.

Each week they do some floor exercises - forward and backward somersaults, beginning cartwheels, jumping, etc. Alyssa has come along way in her ability to do the somersaults as you can see in this little video clip.



They also get do fun things on the bars and rings. We didn't realize quite how strong Alyssa was until we could see her pulling her legs up during the different activities. She did a little better at some of this in the last class when we could be right by her to encourage her and remind her what she was to be doing, but she has fun. In this video, she hangs from the rings and then tries to pull herself up on the bars while she's waiting for her coach.



She's brought some of these skills home and has found a new use for the bar on her trampoline. We've had to teach her that she can only go one way when flipping over the bar because if she flips the other way so does the trampoline!



(As a disclaimer, she totally picked out her clothes this day and originally had a black hooded sweatshirt on with it but got hot while jumping.) She loves playing around on the trampoline but you can tell she's in control of what she's doing.

By far her favorite activity is the balance beam. She loves walking on the balance beam, and she was so excited the night they finally got to walk on the big balance beam. This past week, the coach had to tell her to slow down though because she was going too fast.



We've been amazed by what they have the kids doing in the classes. And Alyssa absolutely loves her "bimnastics" class. She looks forward to it each and every Monday night, although she can't always remember what night she goes, so she asks almost every day if she gets to go again. She enjoys her coach and likes to show off the stamps she gets on her hands or feet for doing a good job. And she calls all the other girls her friends even though she just recently learned all of their names

For our part, we continue to encourage her to have fun, listen to her coach, and follow the directions. She is a good listener although she does get a little goofy at times when she sees what the other girls are doing. But as long as she's having fun, that's all that matters!