Activities for the little ones?

[stargazer]

I'm going to be teaching a low-key 'gymnastics' class at my local rec centre, and I'd love to hear your ideas on activies, songs and games for the little ones! I am a gymnast and a coach, but have not taught gymnastics to kids this young before (though I do teach swimming to very young kids). The classes are 45 mins long, and the ages will be 15 months-2 years, and then 2-4.5 years (parents must attend as well). There is very basic equipment that has been purchased (the 'beam' is a bench), but what we do have (cheeses, mats, a little bar for hanging, spring board, 'stacked trapezoids' that make a vault, etc) is good quality and perfectly safe. I would really appreciate having an extensive list of songs and games that I could use to keep things interesting over the course of 9 weeks. Thanks

P.S. I am very friendly and good with kids, but I don't know if I would be able to do a 'let's all be dinosaurs today and go around the circuit like a dinosaur' type thing.' Although if you find that works well I suppose I could figure something out.

 

[gymcoach26]

I think there is a huge difference between a 2.5 year old and a 4.5 year old, so I might consider splitting the class differently. A 4.5 year old deffinately does not need a parent doing in with them. At 2.5 these kids are still babies. I would consider making a 2-3.5 year old class where parents assist and then a 3.5- 5 year old class.

I am not a huge fan of the "lets pretend we are dinosaurs and imagine this and that" type teaching style either. Once in a while it needs to be thrown in for a short time, but I like to use physical objects and props more. Stretching has the potential for being the most boring part of a preschool gymnastics class, but I think it is one of the most important parts. Not necesarily because they need a good stretch relative to the activities they will be working on, but more so to teach them basic gymnastics terminology and body positions. You can make it fun!

Stretching ideas:
This is when the imagination might come out a little bit..
1. Sit in a pike and make a pizza- "roll out the dough by reaching from your knees to toes, rub the sauce on your belly, sprinkle the cheese on your knees, cut the pizza in half- now your sitting in a straddle"
2. Straddle stretch we make rainbows- give the kids a pile of different colored objects by each foot. Bring a red object from one foot over the top and put it by the other foot. Repeat with different colors
3, incorporate a song like heads, shoulders, knees, and toes or row your boat (to be done in a pike strectch aka your boat of course)
4. Incorporate letters into stetching= V-sit; letter T is "side middle arms" letter O is "crown arms", letter I is a "finish"

For Equipment and Skills:
Incorporate props in again
1. walk across the beam carrying different objects, stepping over objects etc. One week it could be letters, another week colors, another week shapes. I think parents like this practical stuff!
2. Bars- hold something between your feet while you swing, balance somehting on your knees while in a tuck hang
**If doing any front support skills, pullovers, or rolling actions around the bar I would suggest cutting a piece of pool noodle to tape around the preschool bar so it doesn't hurt their stomach. The piece should be just as wide as their hips, but still allow them to grip the actual bar
3. Vaulting- make a game of who can make the loudest noise when they jump on the springboard; play hopscoth; practice running differnet ways (knees up, kicking bum etc), jumping on one foot then the other
4. Floor- preschoolers heads are much bigger than their body, so be especially careful! They should also not be doing any bridges.

Set the expectations for parents as far as how much they need to participate and help (i.e - Mom's do not come in your skirt that you wore to the office today!). Also, educate them on proper ways to spot their children and also what is realistic for preschoolers to be doing vs not doing.

We have a lot of the Kimbo CD's for the preschool music.

If you can find some cheap big puzzles you can incorporate that into your circuit for hand eye cordination. It also helps to slow the circuit down a bit. So you might have one puzzle at the beam (walk across with a piece and put in the puzzle on the other side). Then the child moves onto the bar, where there is a different puzzle. Take a turn on the bar and then put one piece in this puzzle and move on etc.
Do you have a parachute? That is always a HUGE hit!

Got to get going, but hope that gets you started!

 

[coachmolly]

The little ones are so much fun to work with and it's less about the actual gymnastics skills than it is about just getting them moving, having fun, and teaching them a few basic positions along the way. gymcoach26 gave some great ideas, here are a few more that I can think of off the top of my head that were pretty successful in working with that age group.
1. Collect wind up toys and place in a bag. Have a child pick a toy (one at a time), wind it up, and duplicate what the toy is doing. So the toys need to be doing pretty basic things- we had some that jumped, twirled, waddled, you get the idea. Have the kids use the floor and then ring a bell or make a noise for them to know it's time to come back.
2. Have them act like different animals/moving objects across the floor. I would try to do a swimming, flying, running, and jumping one at least. For the older kids you can thrown in things like crab walks. It gets them warmed up and some of the initial energy out.
3. We had 2 large cubes- kind of like dice for a board game but bigger- on 1 we had numbers 1-6 and on the other we had exercises/skills that were age appropriate. We would roll each and then put them together. So like 6 jumping jacks or 4 frog jumps.
Other than that, just lots of jumping over, climbing over, crawling under, jumping (2 feet, 1 foot, pattern of the two), basic shapes. Slides and tunnels are fun if you have them. Good luck and have fun! I really miss the pre-school kiddos from the gym I used to work at.

 

[stargazer]

Thanks guys you've been really helpful!! That puzzle piece idea is awesome, I'll have to see if they have those. The 'ice cubes' sound great, I'll probably end up making something similar.

I would love to split the ages up differently, but there are at least 10 people registered in each group and it would be absolute chaos if some of their parents just dropped them off and left. The set-up is two circuits that we alternate on, so everyone will be everywhere at once! (With me at the hardest stations of course).

Are there any particular songs you found have been a big hit?

I really like Down by the Bay (one side of the room is the bay, one side is home, you crouch down at 'watermelon' and then have an action to do at the end), and Going on a Lion Hunt, but I don't know many other 'action' songs. Other than Itsy Bitsy Spider and that gets old pretty fast

 

[Kiwi]

We sometimes play a warm-up game called 'finding things'. You say things like "Find 4 things in the gym that are blue and touch them with your elbow". They run around the gym doing this then run back to the middle. Then you say 'Find 5 things in the gym that are green and touch them with your knee" and so on, you get the idea. This only works if you have different coloured stuff in the gym!

 

[SuperGirlmlm]

When I was little, we played stick it! on the beams, where you have to stick a specific skill and if you don't, your out of the game. Another game was graduation where you do a specific skill on a low beam, which is considered kindergarten, and you progress beams until the high beam.

 

[wgagym]

Some of my favorite action songs are Shake your Sillies Out, The Exercise Boogie, The Bean Bag Alphabet Rag, and any Freeze Dance song you can find! Kids love them. Just start playing around on I-tunes and see what you can find.