During our Olympic theme, our time was spent on the parallel bars, beams & trampoline.

Surfs Up! 🏄🏻‍♂️ The surfboard set up at Parallel Bars challenged our sense of balance - the rocking motion of the surfing station felt just like being on a wave. After surfing, we took a swing of the golf club, aiming for a hole in one on our mini Kindergym golf course ⛳️ It was a great test for our hand & eye coordination. Before we finished this rotation, we rode our mountain bikes over the bumpy track, under the bridge, and carefully weaved through to the finish line.

We practised marking and kicking the football over on the Beams 🏉 where our favourite AFL teams were featured! The aim on the low beams was to stay steady while swapping the footys over so that we had a chance to score a goal. By swapping the footys, we were managing transfer of weight and feeling the effect of lowering our centre of gravity on our balance. We also tested our agility by jumping, hopping and moving our weight from one leg to the other - these activities are great for our cartwheel development!

There were plenty of exciting Olympic sports to discover during our Trampoline rotation. We practised our trampolining skills with seat drops, tuck jumps and star jumps, then had fun jumping and catching the basketball. Our athletics track alongside the trampoline had us taking on the hurdles and long jumping. We measured our jumps and were amazed at how far Olympic champions can leap🏅

Start Here, Go Anywhere

Each sport is unique in its own way... but WHY is gymnastics unique and HOW do skills learnt transfer across to other sports?

Gymnastics builds a solid foundation of movement and basic skills by covering many dominant movement patterns (DMP’s) including swinging, jumping and landing, locomotion and rotation. Introduced early, this broad DMP approach develops well rounded physical attributes and excellent levels of coordination. Another significant advantage of participating in gymnastics lies in learning how the body reacts, performs, and adjusts to new and difficult challenges. Confident gymnasts often excel in a range of sports because it takes them less time to learn certain sport-specific movements, how to coordinate difficult positions and simply due to their ability to control their body. Basic rolls, cartwheels and jumps challenge the body in unique ways, creating body awareness and management skills that can make skill learning in other sports seem easy. 

A strong gymnastics foundation will improve confidence and performance in sports like netball, football, swimming, cheerleading and countless others. In fact, there is no sport that a child will participate in that gymnastics doesn't add significant value to.

Take a look at this great clip, demonstrating the link between gymnastics and sport in general: