When It's Raining Outside, Jump Around Inside

Most of our local gymnastics studios do this completey ingenious thing--a couple of mornings a week for an hour or so, they open up their entire studio to free play by preschoolers. All the equipment, all the space, all the stuff. At four bucks per kid, it's an activity that's too expensive for me to take the girls to regularly, at least not when there are so many good free activities geared to preschoolers nearly every weekday morning, but one gym, Rising Star, occasionally offers this open play time free for an entire month.

And thus begins our month of regularly-scheduled antics:I never took gymnastics classes as a child, so a lot of this stuff I'm just guessing at, but I think that this long trampoline must be used for practicing floor routines, like flipping and stuff:

The deep pit of foamies is probably a likely landing spot for vaults, jumps, or high bar work, but it also works for belly-flopping and wallowing:My favorite thing about the open play time is that, unlike most of the other activities for small children that we do regularly--storytime at the public library, Discovery Time at Wonderlab, puppet shows and teddy bear tea parties and such--I do NOT bring a book to open play. I wear my yoga pants and my sports bra, and I will happily wait in line with a bunch of three-year-olds for a turn on the giant trampoline. And that time that I got stuck in the pit of foamies and couldn't quite haul my own butt out and that stay-at-home dad laughed at me, I didn't even care.

Because by god, that pit of foamies RULEZ!!!

It's also funny to see how much braver my kids are than I am. Oh, how I long to fling myself from the top of the pommel horse like a cat on a sparrow:Will does any kind of leaping and daredevil work, but Syd seems especially fond of the balance beam these days:And of course, she's perfectly happy to swing for just as long as anyone is willing to push her:So, do they look like they're having fun, or what?

And we get to go back again on Friday!