Last Saturday I brought Ben to Gymboree class for the second time. Gymboree classes offer a lot of ways to teach little kids about themselves, art and music. I decided to enroll Ben in the general play class, since in his grandparents take care of him during the week and he doesn’t have much exposure to other kids. Whenever we do see other kids he’s shy and reserved, so I just want to make sure he does something social.

We had gone to Gymboree several months ago, before Ben had turned 2. I wanted to take advantage of the free first class that they offered. It wasn’t too successful. He never took part in the group activities like story time, playing with the parachute, and dancing and singing. All he wanted to do was go on the slide. There was a point where they were playing with maracas that Ben enjoyed, but when it came time to return them to the bin - “clean up time”, Ben would NOT let go of his maracas and I had to pry them out of his hands as he screamed. The whole experience was not an enjoyable one.

But this time around, Ben had a great time. At first he didn’t want to take part in story time, but once I made him try out some of the other activities, he really had a great time. There was one activity where the teacher had a big monkey puppet and hid little “baby” monkey around the room. As soon as Ben figured out that they were supposed to find the baby monkeys and return them to their mommy (which they would get a monkey kiss as a reward) he was ALL over the place hunting for baby monkeys. He found the most monkeys of all the kids there. Then came the big test - maraca time! Ben listened to the teachers instructions, first making lots of noise with the maracas, banging them on the ground. Then, making soft maraca sounds by gently touching the ground with the maracas. He was the only one to make the soft maraca sound like the teacher, and was rewarded with a “very good, Ben!” After that, it was parachute time, and Ben actually played with a little girl, running around the parachute and chasing her, laughing and jumping the whole time.

It was definitely a better experience the second time around, and now that we’ll be going weekly I think Ben will get better and better around other kids (there were still a couple crybaby moments, but not as many as the first time). If this works out, I don’t mind spending the extra money to pay for art or music classes, which I know he’d enjoy. But for now, we’ll just stick with playtime!

Tags: Ben //