Handstand Week!

Toddler Concept: Upper Body Strength

This week at Flip's, we'll be working on our handstands. The ability to invert your body, to an un-natural position, all while balancing your body weight on your hands takes effort and strength. This basic movement in gymnastics, is one that helps build your childs upper body strength and balance. What you can do at home: Start with a wall, preferably a padded one. Make sure you have plenty of open space all around you, and a padded surface underneath you. Make sure to 'spot' your child through the process to help protect them. Help them to rotate their body weight up over their arms, and then put their feet against the wall. This will help the body adjust. Then help them to rotate back over and stand upright.
Handstands are no easy task, but they do have some proven benefits:
Health Benefits of Handstands

• Alleviating the effort of gravity on the coronary muscle
• Achieves decompression of the spine
• Enhances circulation
• Provides a boost in the endocrine system
• Achieves a sense of calm and balance
• Relief from mild depression

Working on this at home will build your child's confidene and upper body strength. Happy Handstands to you all this week!

'Roll Like a Pumpkin"

Concept: Rolling

Teaching children to roll like a ball or pumpkin is called 'Imagery'. You may know it also referred to as a simile. Children like pretending they are something else. It helps to make a point or to help children understand a concept.
Learning to roll is no easy task. The natural reflex of being up side down is to quickly get the body back into an upright position. A child that knows how to roll, even if it is down a wedge mat, has overcome the reflex and gained body control.
If your child has not rolled yet, or is afraid to be upside down, using the "roll like a pumpkin" concept may help. For ages two and up  give them something to put under their chin like a bean bag. This usually helps to keep the head tucked.
Remember to get down with them and roll yourself. Be Brave!

This weeks theme: Hugs Not Drugs

Toddler Concept: Before and After
We have been wanting to fit this concept in somewhere for a long time. We are all comping up on, if not already involved in, the process of "potty training". The hardest part of this wonderful feat is trying to get a two year old to understand the concept of "tell me before".
Hopefully, today's class will help your child to comprehend what in the world we are talking about. Your child will hug the teacher before s/he rolls over the steamroller, and will hug you after the steamroller. Then after climbing out of the Tumblebugs (pit), your child shoud hug you before going down the barrels and hug the stuffed animal after jumping down the barrels. Use your imagination to make up your own "before and afters." We are counting on this to help send us on our way to "big boy underwear Heaven!" In the weeks to come, give us some feedback on whether on not this helped you."

Fire Safety Week

Theme: Fire Safety Week
Toddler Concept: Fire Prevention

Statistics: Children under 5 years of age are at the greatest risk from home fire death and injury; their death rate is nearly twice the national average. Each year, nearly 488 children ages 14 and under die in home fires, and another 116,600 children are injured from a fire/burn related incident. (Karter, 2010)
Often, children do not learn proper fire safety behavior such as dropping and rolling on the ground if clothing catches fire, crawling instead of running out of a house, or covering their mouths if it is smoky. Fire safety education is important and is powerful in preparing families and children for a fire emergency, especially when practiced.

What you can do at home: Help your children practice proper fire safety behavior. 1. Covering their mouths when smoky, crawling on their hands and knees because smoke and heat rise to the upper level of the room, and stop-drop-and-roll if they catch on fire.
Take your kids to meet a firefighter. More statistics show that many children didn't recognize and or trust the fireman that were there to help them. Causing them to be in the subjected to the heat and flames longer.

This week at flips, we'll be teaching the most basic of fire safety rules. Ask your kids what they learned and go over it with them at home. The more it is practiced, the better chance it will be a reaction when they need it most.

Backwards Week

This weeks theme: Backwards Week
This weeks Concept: General Directionality

Did you know that children have to learn concepts about direction and spatial awareness by using their bodies first? They can most easily understand movements like forward, sideways, and backwards by moving their bodies in these directions. They also learn relationships regarding space such as near, far, around and on by seeing their body in relationship to another object. You can help your child learn and understand these concepts by using words to describe the direction and space they are using. Once they understand these concepts, they can apply them to other objects in their world. Remember, you are their number one teacher, so talk to your child and help them learn and increase their vocabulary.