Gymnastics is an incredibly popular sport for children of all age groups, and for a good reason. It’s well known for increasing flexibility and mobility in children, building their core muscles, gross and fine motor skills in order to help in school!
At The Little Gym, we do more than that 😉, we incorporate cognitive development in our program to help children build self-confidence and self-esteem to prepare them for school and continue keeping them focus on their growth! Therefore, it is important to continue the classes when starting school to not change their routines.
With more than 400 gyms around the globe, The Little Gym has created its unique curriculum, a non-competitive program to encourage children to do THEIR best, and not worry about being THEIR best. During each class, we work on our 3-Dimensional Learning:
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- Brain Boost: Helping children identify their comfort zone and how to get out of it, challenging themselves, etc.;
- Citizen Kids skills: Learning to be a good sport, helping each other, teamwork, social skills;
- And to do all that we use the Get Moving which is crazy fun gymnastics, so that our darlings don’t even realise they are learning tons of new things 😉
Please find below some focuses we work on during our weekly class:
Cognitive growth:
By doing gymnastics at The Little Gym, we engage both sides of a child’s brain. The left side of the brain is responsible for analytical thinking while the right side of the brain is responsible for creative thinking and spatial awareness.
Gymnastics requires children to perform coordinated skills. Coordinated skills require both sides of the brain to work together on the same element of the activity. While landing on a mat, children need to keep their feet together and apply the same amount of force to each leg. If their brain doesn’t work in unison for this, the gymnast will lose their balance.
Developing physical skills… but not only:
Our classes offer a comprehensive curriculum for developing physical skills, such as strength, flexibility, speed, coordination, power, and balance. It helps children sleep better and equip them with the skills to handle emotional challenges in life.
Attending your class every week provides the children with the opportunity to communicate with people their own age, work within a team, and engage with adults to learn about social skills like listening, following directions, taking turns, being quiet, learning independence and respecting each other’s.
As well as physical development, we build discipline and focus. By taking instruction from their coach and then applying the learning themselves, our children not only make good progress in their development, but they also learn about commitment and discipline. This is a positive way to install life skills and healthy habits for children.
The combination of physical development as well as learning healthy habits makes gymnastics a popular choice for both parents and teachers.
Develop strong bones and improves overall health:
Our classes help to develop strong bones as well as reduce the risk of developing health conditions and diseases. By placing this normal pressure on children’s bones, bone density is increased for a strong skeletal system. An added benefit of strong bones is the decreased risk of osteoporosis later in life.
By participating in your weekly classes, children also reduce chances of developing other health-related diseases. This includes asthma, cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.
The regular and well-rounded exercise that comes with the classes, encourages a healthy diet for fit children as well as a balanced lifestyle. Combined, this reduces the risk of obesity and improves the immune system.
Kids have great fun!
While the other benefits are important, they don’t mean much if a child doesn’t enjoy the activity they are doing.
Luckily, our classes can be a never-ending source of enjoyment for children. Whether they are doing forward rolls or balancing, there is something new for children to learn every week. There is a reason why The Little Gym is worldwide and successful – kids simply love it!
Give it a try and see how fast your little one blooms thanks to this holistic program!