Coordinating your body in a forward direction can be hard enough… but exploring motion backwards adds a whole new set of challenges to little brains and bodies.  Exploring movement in both directions is both a healthy and fun part of children's development. Sight is the sense children rely on the most and as you can imagine, moving backwards removes this sense, challenging body and spatial awareness.  When going backwards, little brains need to focus and concentrate on where their body is and what it's doing by using the other senses - tactile, vestibular, proprioception. In our next Jnr Gym Kids theme, we’re having fun going forwards and backwards!  Challenging children’s thinking and helping build coordination, balance and control, we will try lots of fun locomotion activities in both directions.

So how will we do this at gymnastics?

We will be jumping forwards and backwards, landing in our awesome motorbike shape. Children will practice their forward and backward rolls down a slope, thinking about their start and finish positions. We're going to pull out the scooter boards for some locomotion fun! The challenge here is figuring out the different coordination needed to go backwards or forwards. This is all very tricky stuff for our under 5’s and why we practice at gymnastics. Over on the beam our Jnr Gym Kids will practice balance and control as they walk forward and backwards here too. When taking those backwards steps, we will be reminding our Under 5’s to feel with their feet, instead of looking with their eyes. And we will also be focusing and revisiting our front and rear support shape, as children feel the difference between having the front or back of their body facing the floor. We look forward to going in different directions in our fun forwards and backwards theme. Thanks for moving, learning and growing with us at gymnastics.