Gymnastics

Today is Friday and we have been here for over 1 week!  I have gone with the kids to gymnastics every time which is 4 times so far and will go again today.  Actually Samara only goes once a week, but Alyssa goes 3 times a week because she is on the gymnastics team.  There are 4 girls on her team and they are all in first grade!  It is amazing to see what they can do at that age.  I am impressed with their teacher.  She has great patience to deal with 4 little wiggly and giggly girls for an hour 3 days a week, plus all her other classes.  She keeps a pretty tight rein on them but the other day when it was really stormy, every kid in that gym was squirmy and sort of out of control!  It didn't seem like any of them could stay focused!  Then on Thursday they all seemed to be much more settled down and focused.  It was still very rainy but they didn't act like kids do usually when it is stormy.
 

 Alyssa gets help with her back walkover

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It has been interesting for me to see how they teach all the skills we see at the Olympics to little girls and boys.  The gym has all kinds of equipment to help the kids.  The staff is very safety conscious and the kids are never put up on high equipment without a teacher to spot and help them.  There are several classes going on at once in the gym each with a separate teacher and also some of the bigger classes have helpers too.  They have 2or 3 balance beams that are just inches off the floor and the kids work on them before they ever are allowed on the regulation height beams.  The bars are not as high as regular ones either and they put mats and pads underneath them.  There is a climbing wall in the gym and some ropes to climb too.  The kids are not allowed to climb unless it is part of their lesson.  They also have trampolines that are kind of built into the floor so you don't have to get up onto them.  The students bounce and do their aerial somersaults and tricks on them.  Some of the older kids (teenagers) flip and land on a pile of mats at the end of the trampoline.  I really like to see all the different age groups and how quickly they learn their skills and how the teachers work with them to have good form.

 

 Alyssa on the trampoline

Samara's class (4 year olds)  meets upstairs in a separate room with even more miniature equipment!  They learn some very basic skills like somersaults, dangling on a bar and some exercises to help build their strength,  Very interesting,  I think they start kids at age 3 at this gym.  The people that run it are very interesting too.  The family is Hungarian and originally were circus acrobats.  They have a lot of memorabilia from the Ringling Brother's circus displayed in a case upstairs.  I think most of the teachers are part of the family.  In summer they run several camps and one of them is teaching circus acts!  Acrobatics and high wire are some of the features but they also have pictures of kids learning how to do clown makeup!  Wouldn't that be fun!  I'd like to go to that camp!

Svetlana spots Alyssa as she does her back walkover

Well, I'm off to take Alyssa to gymnastics.  I'll try to get some more pictures, today.  Oh, the sun finally came out today after a week of pouring rain!