Hi! If there is anyone who may have some creative ideas to keep my Tumbling class interesting and fun for the ages of 6-9. This is their 1st year of tumbling, but the kids have great technigue and pick things up very quickly. I have mostly taught tumbling in half our sessions, so an hour seems so long to me. Do any of you teach tumbling for an hour? If so, may I have some advice on how you go about running your class and still keeping the kids on their toes? Thanks a bunch to anyone who can help!!!

My tumbling classes are 1 hour. We warm up for approx. 15 minutes. Stretch jumps, tuck jumps, pike jumps. Then we do floor stretches. One stretch they love to do is butterfly stretches. While we are doing the stretch we go around the circle and ask each girl what color their butterfly is. It sounds kind of silly but it takes up time and they love it. They get really elaborate in their colors.

We then do sequences of each of our front rolls. Then do combinations of front rolls, example front tuck, tuck, straddle, straddle, tuck.

Then we do the same with back rolls.

Handstand drills, Handstand rolls, cartwheels, cartwheel drills over folded panel mats, Round-offs, Round-offs over folded panel mats. Another favorite is the superman drill. Stand a wedge mat up on end. The child stands close to the mat facing it. Start a cartwheel,at the top of cartwheel turn so stomach is touching mat, snap down. This is a really good round off drill. A verbal cue we use for this is twelve 0'clock, shoulder block, snap down. This helps really square the round off up so they land straight to prepare them for round-off sequences.

They also like to roll a big rubber dice and do a combination of the number of skills that they have rolled.

Hope this helps.

With 6-9 year olds and tumbling you can fill an hour easy. A big warm up is important for tumbling otherwise it can be dangerous. And lots of streching should be done, lots of back and shoulder streching for bridges, walkovers and so on and lots of leg streching for splits. Also strength work is important. Push ups and things to build up the arm and shoulder muscles so they can hold handstands and cathc all their body weight on their hands later on when they do handsprings. As well as leg strength exersizes for powerful hurdles and jumps and strength in their core, stomach and back to hold their bodies tight. Strength can be made into circuts and games too.

Forward rolls
forward rolls starting and finishing in different positions like pike, straddle, L sit.
Dive rolls
Backward rolls
backward rolls finishing in different positions like push up, straddle, pike.
Handstands
Cartwheels
round offs
1 arm cartwheels
bridges
limbers
front and back walkovers


Do you have a beat board or mini tramp, they can practise different jumps off the tramp like straight, tuck, star, pike, straddle, 1/2 turn, full turn and so on. Practising landing and sticking the skills without wobbling.

Thanks, I really appriciate your tips. I love the dice idea too!

Thank you for replying to my post. I so appriciate any advice. I had to improvise, because my class is already under way. I start off with the girls at the bar. We do Grand Plies, Tendu, Battment to warm up their legs.I also have them work on arching their backs, but I feel like this is boring for them. Do you think it strange to start with this? I do have them do splits, crunches, and push ups too. I also have this new problem. Maybe you could help me? I have beginners and intermeidiate in the same class. I am only 5'2 and some of these 9 year olds are bigger and taller than me. I really need to focus on the beginners, but the intermeidiate ones seem bored. How do I manage this? I want to try to have the more advanced on one mat practicing and the ones that don't know what they are doing on another, but what if someone gets hurt while I am working with one of the less advanced students? Also I am killing myself trying to hold them up on their handstands. They are too big!! Yikes!! Sometimes I can't hold their weight and we both come falling down. Ha Ha! Would love your insight.

The students dont all need to be doing the same thing at the same time. Maybe divide your girls into two groups, say red and green, and it can be red group coming down the mat with forward rolls and green group with round offs. Most tumbling classes have a mix of abilities because it is very difficult to keep the kids of the same age together as they can be so different in skills.

It can work with everything. Got all the kids on the mat working bridges some will be pushing up from the ground, some will be bending back from standing and so on.

For spotting handstands, they are not a terribly dangerous skill, the students can do them against a wall or even spot each other which we do with kids as young as 7 or 8.