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SHARED by: Melissa van Wijk, Director of Tiny Tot Fitness 

Sure, a 7-month-old is young, but certainly not too young to be placed in an environment where teaching and learning take place. The biggest emphasis in the Tiny Tot Fitness program is on the babies’ physical development. You learn different ways to engage your child’s emerging gross motor skills and control. We play in a way that challenges the babies’ strength, sitting balance, protective reflexes, upper body strength, depth perception and traveling/crawling. The infants also engage in early motor planning as we teach them things like stair climbing – which is very important to NYC babies who live in apartments without stairs – and how to climb off of high equipment (or couches!). Think of it this way, your baby has learned to sit independently, Great! Now we have the child sit on a exercise ball that we move around. Suddenly sitting gets a lot more challenging! And we do that with all areas of their development, gently working with them one on one and applauding their efforts every step of the way.

Classes are also a chance for your baby to be exposed to lots of sights, sounds as well as other babies. This can take some getting used to at first. You’ll see that with a little exposure the babies not only get used to all the new sensory input, they start to enjoy it and seek it out. They learn that certain sounds have meaning like when we shake some bells to indicate the next activity.

No class is complete without puppets (to learn gentle touch), bubbles (for visual tracking and eye-hand coordination), sign language (so babies can express themselves before they develop speech), and lots of songs and manipulatives to explore. Lastly, as an added bonus, you’ll leave our classes having learned a bunch of original songs so you can expand repertoire beyond Twinkle Twinkle and Old MacDonald!