Friday, February 29, 2008

You win, you crazy skipping sympathizers

YES, Lisa got to go to her skipping class. Homer picked her up from the babysitter’s house and they cooked up a compromise before coming to get me: she could go to the skipping class, but she could not play Webkinz until Saturday.

So, about the skipping. We were at the Santa Claus Parade and a team of precision skippers was on one of the floats. Lisa was intrigued. She’s actually a really good skipper; she mastered Double Dutch at 5 years old. So, I told her I would look into it.

She’s in a class with an age range of 7 to 12 years old. She is the youngest in the class at 7; the other girls are all 10 to 12. She looks like such a tiny, flat-chested little thing with all these big girls.

They do endurance skipping. They do a pyramid of times with increasing lengths each week. Last night it was 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 4 minutes, 3 minutes, 2 minutes. So, a total of 14 minutes straight skipping, with a 30 second break between levels.

They also do trick skipping. Tricks they do: crossovers, backwards crossovers, can-can kicks, partner skipping (where you hold one end of your partners rope and they hold yours, then you skip together), double skips (turn the rope really fast so it goes around twice before the next jump), and other things that I can’t recall right now.

Then, they get out the big ropes and do all the playground songs and also Double Dutch. Lisa never has to turn the rope because she’s too small to get the rope over the big girls’ heads! This pleases her.

Anyway, she is good. Definitely the second best in the class (behind a particularly good 12-year-old who could seriously teach the class). Lisa’s good because she is light on her feet and has a lot of stamina. Like many of you, I would LOVE to take a grown-up version of this class. It’s a phenomenal work-out.

Now, don’t you dare start asking me about Webkinz, because this marks the end of my 7-year-old extracurricular activity tutorials. Hee.

7 comments:

email said...

Oh, I know all about Webkinz; no help needed there. But thanks for the skipping lesson. As far as I know, there's nothing like that around here.

Beck said...

Good job, Lisa! My eight year old has yet to master skipping - she takes after her mother.

Family Adventure said...

That does sound like a lot of fun. And how amazing that she is doing so well in a clss with only older girls. Go Lisa!

Heidi

Sarah said...

This sounds like an amazing workout!

Swistle said...

I'm glad you let her! Even though I totally see why you might have made the other decision too!

Chantal said...

That totally sounds like fun. I agree, an adult version would rock.

Jess said...

This class sounds like something that would make me want to die. Actually, now that you mention it, in fifth grade we had this "Cardio Kids" program where we all had to take some sort of aerobics-type class, and mine was jump rope, and it was awful. I am phenomenally uncoordinated, apparently.