Mika and Camila have just started taking "circus" classes at Trapeze Arts in Oakland (situated near West Oakland BART station). The absolutely LOVE it. The hour-long classes are quite affordable, at $100 for 8 classes (I think that's even cheaper than the classes they've taken from our local Parks & Recreation department), and they even pro-rate for those who start late. And, I'm told, they are super fun.
Camila is taking the pre-school circus class (for kids 3-5), which is of course less challenging than Mika's "Kids' circus" class (for kids 6-8). I thought that I'd describe some of the things that Mika did today, so that people considering taking the class have an idea of what it entails:
-Trampoline: jump backwards, flips, dance. The trampoline is huge, it runs half the length of the building, and the kids thought it was *very* fun.
-Floor Gymnastics: tumbling, cartwheels, summersaults, black flips, jumping, stretching (Mika is super interested in learning how to do splits, and they are teaching her).
-Rope: climbing
-Bunk beads: where a kid is on all fours, belly up and another kid gets on top in the same position
Mika tells me that in the class for older kids they climb on curtains and do dance moves. Apparently nobody is doing the trapeze. They also have stilts, unicycles, and other equipment, and I'll post about it if the kids use it.
Camila hasn't been very good about describing her class, but it seems that a lot of what they do is stretching (in different positions) and doing different jumps in the trampoline. But whatever it is that they do, Camila had a LOT of fun. Apparently the teacher is very funny, because she kept telling me funny things the teacher had said.
Trapeze Arts also offers a summer camp ($300 for a week), we'll see if Mika is still into it by then.