Non-Structured Environment

I observed the four to five year old Giggle Worms class at The Little Gym of Green Bay on January 17. There are thirteen children in the class, seven girls and six boys. Because of the ratio standards set by corporate, there were three teachers in the class. Every class is run using the same general set up. Class started with the children being let in to sit on the big red mat and shake the bells. One child in this class is nervous, so she sits on the side by the windows until she feels more comfortable and then she joins in. They then sang the welcome song. After the song, the lead instructor introduced the theme for the week, Three Cheers for Chores. The theme changes every week and it often strives to teach the children something outside of the gym, like helping out at home. Each child introduces themselves and then shares their favorite way to help their moms and dads at home. Some of the answers were very sweet and some children even admitted they don’t really do anything to help at home, which was quite funny. After they had all done that, the teacher reminded them of the two rules (be safe and have fun) and they started their warm up. Each child was given a scarf to use a “magic broom” during the song. The Little Gym utilizes a lot of directive music, where the directions are included in the song rather than the teacher having to talk the whole time. The children “cleaned” the floor, under their bed, the walls, the ceiling, themselves and even the teachers during the song. After this the children put their scarves away and sat at the end of the mat as the teachers pulled out the Air Trak, an inflatable bounce thing the kids absolutely go nuts for. They like it so much that they have a hard time waiting for their turn, especially because kids this age struggle with that anyway. We set up two sets of red parallel bars and told them to go into the fire truck to help them stay in line.

After the Air Trak, the children line up in three trains (one for each teacher) and each group went to one of three stations. The stations last for ten minutes each. After the children sit, they are given a magic word and when the teacher says that, it is their turn. The teacher first demonstrates what to do at the station by going through each piece of equipment and showing them what to do while simultaneously encouraging them to follow the rules and pushing them to grow their skills. Once the children start going, many of them will stay at the station and even imitate what the teacher said or did while she demonstrated. Some will wander away to other stations or just run around the gym. The Little Gym emphasizes encouragement through Specific Positive Feedback (SPF), telling the child what he has done well, and Directive Practice (DP), letting him know what he can improve on. All children are made to feel successful.

After the stations, the children play a game. It was called Clean Your Room and the children were split into two teams and they had to throw balls and beanbags onto the other team’s side. Whoever ended up with less stuff on their side won. The children did not really understand the game, but when the teachers participated and encouraged them they had fun with it.

Once the game was over, there is a closing circle where the children sit and talk about what they did at each station. They then bang their “drums” by hitting their hands on the mat and sing the goodbye song.