walking the bridge
so in an attempt to combat the massive energy bursts we started taking nathaniel to the tumble-bee gym on saturdays. the first time he was there, while he participated in what everyone else was doing, he mostly wanted to run around and do his own thing. now, he’s much better at keeping with the group, but at times, he still does run off to go crazy on a trampoline.
climbing the mountain
the day starts off with everyone able to use whatever they want to use, when everyone is trickling in the doors. the only thing they can’t use is the castle with two giant slides (they open it up later for the kids to use during class).
this works out nicely, but there are a few, i guess i should call them ‘less-than-attentive’ parents whose children pretty much just do whatever they want while their mother’s play on their cell phones. after i had to help one girl out of the ball pit twice, i decided i was just going to leave her there. at some point someone else had to have gotten her out because she was running around somewhere else at some point.
on top of the mountain
when the actual class starts up, the girls who run it set up a bunch of discs in a circle for the kids to sit/stand on and they do some stretching type things. once the stretching is over they play a couple dance-y songs that the kids do a lot of shaking and jumping to. once that’s done, the real insanity starts.
usually there is some sort of bridge type obstacle course that they start off on. this past week the had to climb up a wedge mat, walk across a bridge, jump onto a mat that’s inside some ring, climb out of that and onto one of the tampolines to jump his way down to some other bouncy circular mat that they jump down until they finally slide down another wedge mat only to run back around and do it all over again.
stretching my legs
after that the kids got help doing hand stands, and then moved on to the balance beams.
keep in mind that when the kids are not the ones doing the activities with the teachers, they are using whatever equipment is available, sometimes even with parental supervision.
after the balance beams the giant slide castle was opened up. pretty much the kids go in the door on the side, disappear for a few minutes as they navigate their way around the maze inside and end up at either the big or the small slide, slide down and repeat. it’s funny how the kids will sometimes end up at the smaller slide, decide that’s not what they wanted to go down, head back inside and emerge at the taller one.
when that was all finished up, they moved on to what could only be described as nathaniel’s favorite thing ever – BALLOONS!
OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG!
once the parachute came out, and then the balloons came out, nathaniel went a little bit crazy.
he had the biggest smile on his face pretty much the entire time the balloons were out. surprisingly, when it was time to put the balloons away, he actually helped put them into the bag instead of trying to keep them.
the best part about the entire time there? nathaniel passes out for a super long nap afterwards so julia and i can get stuff done* (when i’m not at work).
*getting stuff done usually involves watching american horror story and ringer while eating junk food.
