Tumbling Tykes

Today was Jonathan's first tumbling class. As I said before, it was very much like a Gymboree class. The first 30 min was just time for free play and exploration, then for the last 15 min they played with the parachute and bubbles. One thing they didn't do was sing. There was music playing, but I wish they had actually sang some songs like they do in the Gymboree classes. Jonathan shows a lot of signs of being pretty musical, I need to look into a Kindermusik class for him sometime, he'd have a ball! There were only 3 other kids in the class, Jonathan being the oldest. There were two babies just around a year old and then another little boy who was 20 months. Jonathan is in the class for I believe 9mo-24mo olds and at 10am there's the class for 24-36mo, so I had my choice of which class to have him in. I think I chose just fine because he's a little too timid to be thrown in with some wild and crazy 2 and 3 yr olds. He actually acted much like Clara always has, just sitting back and observing, taking it all in until he was comfortable enough to play. These pics here make it look as though he was really active, but in reality he didn't do too much until the bubbles came out at the end of class.

This is him and his sour look when we first got to class. He's snuggled up close in my lap -- I held the camera out and snapped his picture. When I tried to get him out of my lap, he went behind me and just leaned his chest up against my back. None of the other kids were timid at all.

Finally I got him to play with the balls. Jonathan has been working on learning his colors so he was telling me what color they all were. He knows purple and blue when he sees them. He never gets red wrong, but either he really likes the color, or just likes saying "Rrweeeed!!" because aside from purple and blue, all other colors are 'rrweeeed!' according to Jonathan.

Then we started rolling the balls through the tunnels. Jonathan was not about to go through the tunnels himself, but he thought it was hilarious when someone rolled the balls back to him through the tunnels.

He never actually made it all the way into this tunnel, but he though it was pretty cool because it rolled. He liked to stand next to it and roll it around, or put a ball in the tunnel and watch it roll inside.

When the parachute came out Jonathan wanted nothing to do with sitting in the center and letting us whirl him around, but once the 'group' part of playing with the parachute was done, he decided that it was pretty fun to shake it...

...and even more fun to play peek-a-boo with!

Finally, it was bubble time. I love this pic. Jonathan was trying to blow the bubble with Mrs. Shannon, the class instructor. It eventually popped on his lips and then he kept pointing at his lips saying, "Bubbo!"

The bubbles were the ones from Gymboree, that have that gluey substance in them, which keeps them from popping as easily, though they aren't as bad as those kind we had last year that leave the gluey residue behind. So all the kids (and moms) were trying to catch them

Did I mention Jonathan absolutely loves 'bubbos'?

By the time class was over, Jonathan had warmed up and didn't want to go. Hopefully he'll jump right in when we go back on Thursday!

Here's the big guy walking home after his class. He borrowed his sister's froggy backpack to keep things in while we were in class, and has his sun glasses aka 'cool dudes' in his hand. When did he get so big?

We walked home and got the stroller and then took off for our exercise walk. It hasn't gotten very hot here at all yet, the highs only getting up to about 85. I guess because we're in a valley, but Clara's Tiny Tots class did water play outside today and I considered keeping her home because she's got a nasty cold and with the wind today, it just didn't seem like a good idea. I let her go though since Jonathan's class started today, and it was just a water table, not her getting into a pool or something. I got a pedometer this afternoon so next time I can see how far I'm actually walking . There's nice wide bike paths throughout the neighborhood that we walk on, so I can't just drive to path to check the distance with my car.

Anyway, it was super windy today. The news last night said winds up to 20mph -- and let me tell you, pushing a 35 lb kid in a 20 lb stroller against 20mph winds = awesome workout. If it were always this windy I'd be in great shape in no time, it's like cardio and strength training all wrapped up in one little workout.