Do your little people go to club/classes or nursery / pre-school?

Georgia birthday means she doesn’t qualify for her ‘free’ nursery hours until September 2019 (the term after her 3rd). This girl is bored at home. There are only so many supermarket trips she wants to take part in, and there are only so many cold trips to the park I can take.

Right now, we can’t send her to a private nursery (SAHM life = buh-bye money!) So I started looking at classes and groups I can take her to, my criteria was tough:
1 – must fit well with the school drop off / pick up times.
2 – must be close enough for me to walk to / get public transport to.
3 – must be reasonable £
4 – must be something she’ll enjoy!

My research began, I stumbled across Baby ballet, they had a new class which was a super convenient location and time – boom! Trial booked! The trial was 3 classes (£15) to give us chance to see if it was for ‘us’ and if she would like it. She LOVED it, and like any incredibly biased parent she totally got it! She could do the moves! She was following the direction! Mustn’t get too carried away, but we totally have a prima ballerina in the making  She couldn’t wait to get home and show off her moves to Daddy and Austin.

As soon as our trial ended I signed her up as a lifetime member (a one off fee of £10) and paid for classes for the remainder of the term (£5 a class). It certainly made Christmas gifting much easier on the family as I asked them to buy her the uniform and her beloved Twinkle Teddy, we bought her the ballet slippers and ‘Teddy’ – oh my days! She loves her uniform and her ballet slippers, and quite frankly I have never seen anything so cute in my life than her all dressed up.

So what happens in the class? Georgia attends the “tinies” which means I stay too, we do our warm ups (parent participation is encouraged to get your little’s involved, Georgia doesn’t want her Mummy showing her up, so I’m banned from taking part!). We sing well known songs and dance along, ‘wind the bobbin up’ and ‘row row row your boat’ following the actions. We do lots of feet work, focusing on standing in ‘magic first’ and having ‘nice toes’ not ‘naughty toes.’ We walk on our tiptoes balancing, we gallop and march around the room.

Georgia’s favourite part is the ‘hop scotch’ station, she can’t do it, but damn does she try so freaking hard! She was a ‘late’ jumper (something her health visitor discussed with me when she couldn’t do it at her 2 year review) – she fell off her slide and suffered a suspected toddler fracture, nothing was actually broken but she wouldn’t weight bare and needed to be in a full leg cast – cue mama guilt being at work when that happened! We’ve encouraged her as much as we can but figured she’d get it when she’s ready – baby ballet has made her forget about it and now there’d no stopping her when the ‘jack in the box’ song come on!

We get props to dance with; from sashes, tambourines and Twinkle or Teddy! After we’ve finished dancing with Twinkle or Teddy its time to get them ready for bed – brush their teeth, draw them a bath, give them some milk and quietly put them to bed.

Then the big finale! Dancing and chasing after the bubbles using our ‘good toes’ to pop them, jumping around and tip toeing to reach them, before we do a curtesy and get a stamp / sticker for taking part. Its all about the stamps for us!

It is such a great class and really well put together, it keeps the kids interested. Daddy did have to take her to one class, and he has vowed to NEVER take her again after how much a scene she caused (cue eye roll from me) but after speaking to the teacher it seems she really was on fine form that week almost staging a walk out and refusing to get involved, clearly she could smell his fear.

As long as she wants to keep going, I will continue to take her!

*in the interest of transparency, I was gifted a term for free in exchange for promotion across my social channels. I paid for the trial and the first term of classes.

If you want to know any more about the classes, please drop me an email at toddlerandtoast@gmail.com
Give me a follow on http://www.instagram.com/toddlerandtoast
You can find your local class at:
https://babyballet.co.uk/find-a-class/
https://babyballet.co.uk/babyballet-school/bradford-north/

Thanks for reading
Maria x

This blog was published on https://toddlerandtoast.com/2019/02/04/my-little-ballerina/