Ever read the Robert Fulghum book and title essay All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten? If not, you might want to get it and read it. I love it. In it Fulghum provided us with a list of all the simple life lessons learned in Kindergarten. Well in that spirit, for this blog, I’d like to start a series of an undetermined number (determined of course when I exhaust the topic) of lessons learned in The Little Gym that apply to life.

 

The Little Gym is an enchanted, colorful place where magic happens everyday. And in that spirit, I’m going to start with the power behind the magic: imagination. If you look through the windows into the gym you might only see plain old gymnastics equipment and kids exercising and having fun. What the kids see and feel however is something quite different. Each week their teachers guide them through obstacles of all sorts using just their imaginations.

 

Take the balance beam for example. Some weeks it is a bridge from one land to another. Some weeks it is a dragon’s back. And we all know you should tip-toe carefully if walking across a dragon’s back. Although Miss Erica reports that one 4-year-old assured her that “it was a friendly dragon, so it won’t eat us!” And for manner’s week it was a “burping beam” so the kids burped at the end of the beam then jumped off and said excuse me.

 

Some weeks it is not the beam that is changed, but the kids walking across that are transformed. Last week they were butterflies on the beam. And the kids really get into the spirit of things too. On Friday, Miss Kristin told her students the magic word (word to signal time to go-changes at every station every week) was “butterflies.” One of the 3-year-old girls said, “no. It is gonna be butterfly Mickey Mouse wings sparkle toes!” And so it was. And one day when the beam was a dragon, one of Miss Julie’s 5-year-old students went across yelling “yeehaw!” like she was riding it. How much fun does that sound?!? And that’s my point really. The lesson I’d like to focus on for this entry: even what is essentially a long board you walk across can be transformed into something magical and cool powered by imagination.

 

And we can all engage our children in the world around them this way a little more. Turn off the toys that talk and blink and buzz. Put up the battery powered games and turn off the TV. At least occasionally. Cause I suspect that when we exercise our minds finding fun things to call simple objects, we are preparing pathways in our brain for more complex problem solving later. After all, thinking outside the box, is all about imagination.

 

So go boost brain power by being creative: yours and theirs. And find a dragon of your own to ride or perhaps even tickle. -Angel Hundley