Eagle Gymnastics

Since Sadie is almost 4 & officially in pre-school, we decided to let her try an extra curricular activity this year. I knew she would try soccer (which would be her sport) & I let her choose from dance or gymnastics. Most of her friends do dance, but she was really excited to choose gymnastics! She has been doing flips & cartwheels around the house for the past year or so. Our older neighbor across the street takes it so Sadie is always copying her :)

 

We had her free trial class on Monday morning because that is the class she would enroll in when school starts in September:

 

 

She was also excited to wear her new leotard. She was a little shy when we got there since she had never done it before. They took all of the kids at one time & formed one big circle for warm up & stretching. You could tell the other kids knew what they were doing & she was trying to copy them:

 

 

They only did this for about 5 minutes then they broke into their smaller classes. She is in the kindertot class & there are only 4 of them. All of the classes rotated through 4 different stations. The first station she did the bars:

 

 

Then they went to the trampoline where they practiced jumping front, back & sideways:

 

 

Next they hit the floor. They started with cartwheels which they did right handed & left handed:

 

 

I don't know if you can see in the picture, but they actually have pictures of hand & foot prints to help guide them. She can already do a pretty good cartwheel left handed, but she didn't have a clue how to do it on the other side!

 

The next item on the floor was one of her favorites: front flips & back flips:

 

 

One of her teachers thought it was hilarious because she tried to do a back handspring instead of a back roll!

 

Finally, they went to the balance beam. There were several beams at different heights & they practiced walking front & sideways with their hands by their side:

 

 

The girl in front of Sadie was really scared & walked really slow, but Sadie was a pro & dashed right through the station, so they made her walk backwards:

 

She loved gymnastics so much that before we even walked out, she asked when she could come back :) It is so fun watching her explore & I cannot wait to see how she does with soccer & gymnastics this fall. I am eager to see what comes natural to her & what she enjoys. Who knows if she will stick to one of these activities or if she will be trying something new in the spring semester!