It’s Almost Show Week! Join Us for a Celebration of Progress!

Your child has made incredible progress this Season—boosting brainpower, strengthening new skills and expanding confidence. Now it’s time to celebrate their success!

We would like to invite you to our year-end performance the week of May 20th.  Show Week is an exciting time for you and your child. It allows them to proudly demonstrate the skills they have learned over the course of the Season and provides a great opportunity to become comfortable in front of an audience.  So invite grandma, grandpa, and the entire family for this special occasion!

This week is sure to be full of precious photo opportunities, so remember to bring camera!

"Parenting Resolutions" for the New Year!

Each New Year is a new opportunity to focus on making positive changes in your life. While this is a great habit for everyone, it’s especially important for parents. Why? Because the choices that you make not only benefit you, they have a direct effect on your child’s health, too!

Here are 3 parenting resolutions to consider for 2013:

1. Instill a love for physical activity. Physical activity provides countless benefits. So, it’s important to help your child develop healthy habits at an early age. In addition to gymnastics, The Little Gym has several physical activities for kids, such as Sports Skills and Dance, which can help your child develop a love for an active lifestyle.

2. Establish healthy eating habits. Keep healthy, yummy snacks on hand and set an example for your child with your own food choices. Plan low fat meals that follow the government's MyPlate guidelines and involve your children in meal planning and shopping. This allows you to reinforce your child’s healthy meal options and helps children discover new foods and flavors.

3. Focus on your child's positive behaviors. Like adults, children respond to favorable comments and adopt behaviors that gain them attention. Try to get in the habit of catching your children “at their best.” Providing encouragement for good behavior or for achievements in sports or other physical activities is a great way to motivate children to maintain good habits.

While you help your children develop healthy habits, don’t forget to make resolutions for your own health as well. In fact, consider resolving to get some well-deserved “me” time this year. Planning some time away from the kids should be considered a necessity rather than a luxury. Plus, brief separations are beneficial for kids as well. Time away helps foster a feeling of independence and builds bonds with other adults such as grandma, a favorite neighbor, or The Little Gym instructors. And if you need a parents night out, our Parents’ Survival Nights have got you covered!

As we start the New Year, we’re thrilled to have helped so many children in the Columbia area develop an appreciation for fitness and fun with our kids gym classes.  We’re still taking enrollments for students that want to join for the second half of the 2012-2013 Season. For more information, or to schedule a free introductory class, please contact a team member at 803.738.1115 today!
Dora the Explorer is coming to The Little Gym! Throw a special birthday adventure with Dora and her friends!

Are you looking for a unique birthday adventure for your child? Well, load up your backpack and head on over to The Little Gym! Nickelodeon and The Little Gym have partnered to create “Dora the Explorer” themed birthday parties with a special storyline and music from the Emmy award-winning animated preschool series.

A Dora the Explorer Birthday Adventure at The Little Gym is the perfect way to make the big day extra special. Your birthday child and their friends will have the entire facility to themselves to take part in a fun imaginative adventure with Dora and the whole explorer gang. The birthday guests will help Dora overcome obstacles to find the Birthday Wands which they will use to fly to the top of Birthday Mountain!  During the adventure, they’ll cross Crocodile Lake, jump and bounce through Isa’s Flowery Garden, and more. Along the way, the kids will encounter Tico the Squirrel, Swipper the Fox, and other friends from Dora’s world.

In addition to leading the fun, The Little Gym team will handle everything from invitations to clean-up so you can rest easy and enjoy the fiesta! Many dates and times book up weeks in advance, so call today to reserve your celebration. Let us help make this the most memorable milestone yet!

(Dora and her friends will not actually be at the party. We will use imaginative play to bring Dora to life.)

Help Us Collect One Million Shoes for Those in Need

The Little Gym has teamed up with Soles4Souls to create Big Hearts, Little Shoes, an initiative to help spread shoes and love around the globe. Gently used, overly loved, and outgrown kids and adult shoes can be dropped off at our location during business hours.  The shoes will then be shipped to Soles4Souls, the world’s largest provider of shoes to families living in extreme poverty and recovering from natural disasters.

Big Hearts, Little Shoes is a great opportunity for you to talk to your kids about charity and help to them experience the joy of giving. Go through your child’s closet with them and help them pick out shoes that they don’t want or need anymore. Then, ask them to help you go through yours!

While you’re sorting through your shoes, explain how they will benefit other children and families in need. For instance, you could share that the shoes will help protect children from illnesses, helping them to grow big and strong. They will also help many children attend schools! This is something that they couldn’t do in their bare feet.

Help us reach our goal of collecting one million shoes so we can change one million lives. Together, we’ll all become “Citizen Kids!” and create a better world for everyone!

9/13/12

Cold and Flu Myths: Sorting Fact from Fiction

It starts with a sniffle -- next thing you know, the whole household is sneezing, coughing, and passing tissues.  Before long, the common cold, or worse, seasonal flu, is upon you.

According to the CDC, up to 20% of the population gets the flu each year. The Mayo Clinic cites the common cold as the number one culprit of stay-home-sick-from-school days in children.

While you can't completely germ-proof your child, you can separate fact from fiction to keep your family healthier, and save time, money, and frustration. Start by putting some of the more common myths and misunderstandings to rest by reading about the top 3 cold and flu related myths.

Myth #1: The flu vaccine causes the flu

Truth: Getting a flu shot may cause symptoms that feel like the flu, but the viruses contained in the flu shots have been killed, or "inactivated." which means they can't cause infection. While there may be some achy side effects that can sometimes follow the flu shot, it just means your immune system is responding and processing the vaccine.

Myth #2: You're more likely to get sick if you're cold

Truth: Despite mom's warnings that you should bundle up, being cold does not cause a cold. According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, infections prevail in winter months because they are spread when more people stay indoors for longer periods of time and are in closer contact with each other.

Myth #3: Hugging and kissing are great ways to spread cold and flu germs.

Truth: Cold and flu viruses like to enter the body through the nose or eyes, so a hug or a peck on the cheek isn't likely to be dangerous. Don't be afraid to give your sick child plenty of affection, and don't worry that a kiss or hug will spread your germs to him (or vice- versa).

Many parents recognize The Little Gym locations as safe and clean gyms for children. We work hard to ensure each and every visit lives up to your expectations. Daily and weekly cleaning and sanitation helps keep our environment sparkly and keeps the germs away. 

Here’s where you can help. As with any other illness, we ask that you do not come to class if your child is coughing, sneezing, or has had a fever within the last 24 hours. Our generous make-up policy allows you to attend a make-up class by simply calling us prior to the absence.

Spending Time Wisely

Today marks the first leap year the world has seen in four years because, well, that’s how leap year works and I feel that  I should try to make the most of this “extra” day.  Here at The Little Gym, we put together ten things you can do with those extra 24 hours. What will you choose to do?

10. Be Happy! This day doesn’t come every year after all

9. Build a fort in your house and spend all day in it!

8. Invent a new laugh and use it today!

7. Use the word “leap” at least 3 times in conversation

6. Get a group of friends together and have a leap frog relay race

5.Read one more book to your child at bed time. You know they want to!

4. Try to play with a squirrel (this may be the day)

3. Volunteer! Give your extra time to someone who really needs it!

2. High 5 four complete strangers!

1. Spend the day with ones you love

Happy Leap Day!

Emily Duncan, Gym Director

2/29/12

Confidence…One hour at a time

As a child, I always loved the Tootsie Pop commercials. You know, the ones where the little boy asks the owl, “How many licks does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a Tootsie Pop?”  This commercial popped into my head during one of our Holiday Camps yesterday while watching a girl muster up the courage to walk on the high beam. 

So the question is, “How long does it take to build confidence?” For Isabel, the answer was 3 hours.

Hour 1: She’s getting closer to the beam.  Circling around it, eyeing the stairs, watching the other kids climb right up and walk across.  She backs away and decides to take a stroll down the low beam instead.  She does just fine, but she doesn’t look all that impressed when she gets down.  She looks at the high beam again then heads over to the parallel bars with some friends.  I walk over and ask, “Isabel, would you like to do the high beam with me?” She just shakes her head no, so I offer her to come and find me when she’s ready. 

Hour 2: Oh my! She’s climbed up the stairs!  It took an hour, but she’s up the stairs! I start walking closer to her (you know, safety first) and she is frozen at the top of the stairs.  I take her hand and say, “how about we take 3 steps together?” I get a very polite, “No thank you” before she heads back down the stairs and to the other side of the gym.  She visits the stairs a few more times and each time she comes right back down.

Hour 3: She’s made it back up the stairs, but this time she doesn’t stop there.  One small step, 2 small steps…HOLY SMOKES! She’s halfway down the beam! I’m not really sure what to do at this moment.  I’m helping another child, but I want to call out and say, “Isabel! You’re doing it!” I want to so badly, but I’m afraid of distracting her and breaking her concentration.  So I wait and watch. I make my way over just as she’s jumping down from the high beam and I will never forget the look on her face.  It was joy, amazement and relief all wrapped up in one smile.  VICTORY! She had done it!

I did my best to retell the experience to Isabel’s mom when she came to pick her up, but I’m not sure I did it justice.  I’d like to say that it was a 3 hour long journey that ended in success, however, this wasn’t the end for Isabel…it was the beginning.

Emily Duncan, Gym Director

12/30/11

A New Year at The Little Gym

I don’t know how it happened, but another year has gone by.  While this year has been, well...interesting, I know that I’m exactly where I am supposed to be.

I would like to think that I am an optimist or at least a happy person.  I smile at everyone, I have been known to sing out loud from time to time and I truly look forward to going to work every day (how many of you can say the same thing?) With this mindset, I started to think about what the new year will bring me here at The Little Gym and this is what I’ve come up with…

Witness someone’s first steps, make a new friend, sing on someone’s answering machine, hear a child’s first word, laugh until I cry, hear a child say, “Emily” and butcher it completely, watch a parent do a forward roll for the first time in a long time and smile bigger than their 2 year old, have a child sing louder than me during the good bye song, pretend to be a dinosaur, pretend to be a robot, pretend to be a running hamburger bun , celebrate potty training successes, clean up potty training attempts, think I can still do big gymnastics skills and not be sore the next day, watch a child walk on the high beam all by themselves, get over a hundred high 5s and hear a child say, ”TA DA!”

The best part about all these things…I know they will happen.

Happy New Year!

Emily Duncan, Gym Director

12/26/11

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