Coach Casie's Top 5 Reasons to Enroll Your Child In a Parent & Tot Gymnastics Class

Mother's Day is just around the corner and I've thought what way could I give to the mothers out there? Hmmmm. How about my top 5 reasons for enrolling you and your child in a Parent & Tot gymnastics class?

5.) Fitness: A good class gets both parent and child moving. A family that sweats together, stays together!

4.) To be Social: While your young one may love to look at you all day in the house, chances are you get bored. A parent and tot class provides you and your little one quality time together with your child and out of the house. Meet other parents with children your age while your child meets others their age, it's a great time to make new friends.

3.) Reading Readiness: The components of reading readiness are quite similar to the components of motor skill development. A good Parent & Tot program develops reading readiness, gross motor and fine motor skills.  Below are some of the examples:

• Visual differentiation - seeing and feeling different surfaces, equipment and props; knowing how they are used.
• laterality - moving sideways, log rolls
• Gross motor skills - skipping, running, leaping
• Hand-eye coordination - passing balls back & forth
• Distance, size & shapes -  going through tunnels & specialized mats
• Attention spans - staying at a station to finish a task, doing repetitions of a single skill
• Tracking - following bubbles in the air, 
• Fine-motor skills - popping bubbles with the pointer & thumb
• Sensory discrimination - jumping up high enough to land on top of a mat
• Awareness, perception & memory - listening to the teacher
• Expressive language - explaining to others what they did in class
• Auditory - listening to songs & the instructor
• Imitating - watching instructor to see if they can repeat it
• Directionality - learning left & right w/games, songs and skills

2.) The Bond: There is a special bond that you create with your child when involved in an early movement class. You will be physically helping them maneuver their bodies, you will be their cheerleader encouraging & the hug when they do achieve their goals all in one class!

1.) It's FUN!

As I'm about to celebrate my first Mother's day being a Mommy, I realize how much I love being with my little one. She grows up so fast, just like any other kid. It makes me think that these little ones will have their whole school career to be alone with a teacher, let's soak this time up before it's too late!