Sporty Bjarki

Bjarki and the daycare-dog at the bakery, drinking milk and eating something not-so-healthy-but-really-really-yummy!

The sporty-school people had set up a course using almost the entire available floor-space today – usually they have the gray partition down and only use half of it. Daycare-doggy of course got to tag along inside.

The session always begins with a little circle-time where they sing a couple of short songs, and ‘wake up the limbs’.

Once one of the instructors had explained the entire course, we were off! Here Bjarki’s approaching the snake-pit, where he can’t step on any of the ‘snakes’ (ropes).

After attending sessions like these for over two years now, Bjarki can easily walk down a downward sloping plank. The instructor (on the left) still remarks at how far he’s come since he began with this group a little over a year ago.  It may have even been just at the start of this term where his preferred decent method would have been to slide down on his butt…!

Another great improvement has been Bjarki’s ability to walk heel-to-toe (one foot directly in front of the other). Not so long ago he would have crossed this with his feet shuffling side-by-side on the narrow plank.

Doggy got to cross the next elevated ‘bridge’ with Bjarki…

… as well as the dismount jump!

Parents slowly walking after their charges.

This was a new exercise (for me anyway): Throwing a ball at a particular point on the wall, from behind a line. Bjarki did pretty well, usually hitting the mark, but not always catching the ball afterwards. 🙂

Bjarki’s clambering on the wall-bars has also improved greatly. He’s now much more monkey-like, and much less shaky and unsure in his movements. And he likes going far up while he waits for the slower kids to make their way from right to left (they’re supposed to touch the colored circles).

This next bit surprised me. On our first circle Bjarki discovered that he was supposed to jump as far as he could on to the thick blue mattress. On his second circle, he therefore waited by the wall until the path ahead was clear of kids before…

… taking off at speed…

… hitting the big block at a run, and launching himself, without hesitation, onto the big blue mattress! Not so long ago he would have come to a dead stop by the end of the big block before jumping off.

Towards the end of the session, they gathered the kids up for a game. They were supposed to walk around and find pictures lying on the floor, match them to pictures on a piece of paper they were given, and mark them out. (A ‘bingo’ of sorts.) Once that was done, we made paper-airplanes out of the paper.  Here I’d like to give a big shout-out of thanks to Bjarki’s daycare for teaching him how to hold a pencil properly, because by golly, that’s none of our doing!! 🙂

Bjarki done with his ‘bingo’ and asking me to make a paper-airplane. Behind him is the ‘maze’ (I kid you not) that has a solid ceiling so that parents can’t see where their children are, and thus not help them out. It’s genius!

Running time! All session end with various variations on running between walls.

This would be the ‘run-with-a-paper-airplane-stuck-under-your-chin-while-holding-your-arms-out-like-you’re-flying’-run. 🙂

The session ends with a good bit of stretching…

… and mandatory relaxation. How do you get kids to lie still for a bit? Well, you give the relaxed ones a piece of paper with an image they can color. It works pretty well!