Wee one workout

By NATE HUBBARD/Staff

These babies can boogie.
Crosswalk Dance Academy and Christian Arts is reaching out to the littlest Wythe Countians this fall with a specially designed wee workout program.
The October session of “Baby Gym” at the Wytheville studio began Monday morning with five tots shakin’ out the sillies, clappin’ out the crazies and rockin’ out with mommies.
“Baby Gym helps us to have a good foundation for lots of fun, motor skill development and cognitive development,” said Crosswalk co-director Michelle Patton to her class Monday, her voice exuding an exaggerated expressiveness commonly let loose in the presence of puppies and little human bundles of joy.
Monday’s class got started with Patton and her 23-month-old son, Cade, joining four other moms and tots on bright green, blue, red and purple mats in the Crosswalk studio.
Using Cade as her demonstration model, Patton, with help from her sister, Alena Voyles, the studio’s other co-director, led the quartet of moms and babies through a series of activities.
Patton said she initially got the idea for Baby Gym as a way to help Cade along in his development.
“I wrote the program for my son,” she said. “I saw a need in the county.”
After the class gathered on the mats Monday, Patton and the participants sang hello to each baby using the tune of “Hi-Ho the Dairy-O” as she instructed the moms to lightly bounce their children.
As she led the babies through other movements, Patton sprinkled in a number of lessons ranging from body part identification to manners by sprinkling in messages from books, songs and even a verse from Psalms (chapter 8, verse 2, “From the lips of children and infants …”).
“Baby Gym is all about singing, learning, movement and fun, and reinforcing that bond of parent and child,” Patton said after the class.
The featured “exercise of the day” during the first session was called the “rocking chair” and had the youngsters either giggling on the backs of their moms as they rocked or each mother and child sitting face-to-face as they held hands and moved back and forth.
“Practice every day so you can get strong and do lots of cool things like climb mountains and skydive – although I don’t know what mommies think about that,” Patton said after introducing the exercise.
While movement is the centerpiece of Baby Gym, the class offers much more than the typical adult step aerobics or Pilates session.
Namely, bubbles and kisses.
“You can catch the bubbles, you can stomp the bubbles, you can twist in the bubbles, you can do your rocking chair in the bubbles,” Patton said over a tune teaching the importance of saying “please” and “thank you” as the tots scrambled around after the soapy spheres.
With baby participants Monday ranging from 12.5-months- to 23-months-old, Patton kept the 30-minute class moving at a snappy pace to match the short attention span of the youngsters.
“She moves quickly with them so they don’t get bored easily,” said mom class attendee Denise King of Fort Chiswell.
After the hello song, a quick stretch (“We’re trying to find our toes, our piggies,” Patton said), and the introduction of the rocking chair exercise on the mats, Patton turned the kids loose for free gym time. Soon the studio was filled with smiles and gleeful shrieks as the tots crawled through tunnels, climbed over obstacles and tossed plastic balls.
In addition to developing motor skills, Voyles said Baby Gym also helps the tots become acclimated to social situations – and gives moms a chance to socialize as well.
“It will help [the kids] better participate in classrooms,” she said.
Heather Cullen of Wytheville, who attended Monday’s class with her 13-month-old son, Carson, gave Baby Gym a big thumbs-up.
“For living in a small town, we desperately need something like this,” she said. “I’m just so thankful that it’s here.”
Crosswalk held two, four-week Baby Gym sessions this summer before getting the program going again on Monday.
Cullen said that she and Carson also participated in the summer classes and that the motor skills he learned then were invaluable in getting him ready to take his first steps.
“When he was learning to walk it definitely helped him,” she said.
King, who brought her 21-month-old daughter, Kayden Walters, to Baby Gym for the first time Monday, said afterward that she was impressed by the program.
For Kayden, who was bursting with energy and seemed to need no motor skill refinement based on her frequent dashes across the studio, King said she hopes the class helps her daughter learn listening skills and when to calm down.
“I wanted to get her into something that’s different other than pre-school,” King said.
After 10 minutes of free play Monday, Patton corralled the youngsters back onto their mats with the enticement of bubbles and ended the class with a goodbye song as the moms marched around in a circle with their tots on their hips.
Crosswalk, located at 155 W. Main St., plans to continue offering Baby Gym on Mondays from 10-10:30 a.m. and 5:45-6:15 p.m. throughout October, and, if there’s enough participation, the coming months.
Although the first class of the October session has now passed, the Crosswalk co-directors said new participants are still welcome to join Baby Gym. The studio also offers a number of dance and other movement classes for older children.
For more information about Baby Gym or any of Crosswalk’s other programs, contact Patton or Voyles at (276) 223-1002.
Nate Hubbard can be reached at 228-6611 or .