Serious Fun (in camp) at The Little Gym

We talk about how The Little Gym is "Serious Fun" -- Serious, because we're growing new physical skills, social skills, and building confidence, and "Fun" because every child needs a fun, safe environment to be a kid, play, and use their imagination.

This week is Pirate Week for our camps and Pre/K and Grade School gymnastics and dance classes.  We use different themes, like "Pirate Island" to facilitate the fun part of the equation.  I am super excited to have the best instructors leading our camps this summer.  They know that the more you get into character with the theme, the more the children will stay focused, and the more fun everyone has. 

Here's a short video of Teacher James doing his post-camp announcements, while still staying in character.  He went into a bit more detail than we ask of instructors, but I think it was worth it.  I think *I* want to be in camp with James!

Have you heard about Doctors Express in Lake Oswego?

Doctors Express in Lake Oswego opened up a few months ago. They're just down the street from us. If you head down Lower Boones Ferry Rd towards Lake Oswego, they're on the left, just past the Starbucks on Jean Way. I met with the owner, Guru Sankar, yesterday for coffee. It was fun meeting with another franchise owner, sharing ideas about growing our businesses.

Doctors Express is an urgent care facility. They have real doctors on staff and can do x-rays and lab work in-house, while you're there. They're great for emergencies, or when you can't get in to see your regular doctor.

Guru seems like a nice guy who's also trying to grow a business. He lives in Lake Oswego and has two children in the Lake Oswego public schools.

So next time, you have a medical emergency and can't get in to see your doctor or don't want to deal with the Emergency Room at the hospital, check out Doctors Express. Tell them Ron from The Little Gym sent you, and maybe Guru will buy me another coffee sometime. :-)

FYI... We didn't come up with any joint marketing ideas or partnerships or anything... Guru seems like a good guy and I just wanted to help!

Summer is finally here!!

Welcome to Summer! Today, June 21st, is the first day of the summer season. It's our second day of our summer term, here at The Little Gym, and it's a beautiful sunny day. We've been working our tails off getting the team and the gym ready for a great summer.

This week is our "Wild West" week for our pre-K/Kindergarten and grade school gymnastics and dance classes. This morning Teacher James and Teacher Michael stayed in character for the whole 3-hour camp, leading the campers through fun activities such as searching for water in the deep desert, trying to spear some wild buffalo, and stepping over cow pies on the high beam. We were laughing, just listening to Michael and James from the lobby.

I'm looking forward to a great summer! Hope to see you!
-Teacher Ron

What is The Little Gym "Serious Fun?"

We've been talking recently about The Little Gym and how it's "Serious Fun" for your children.  The Little Gym of Corvallis made a cute video that hopefully gets across how The Little Gym is truly focused on growing skills (the Serious part), while making sure your kids are having a blast (the Fun part).   Enjoy!

June 16 seminar on ADD/ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorders

Join Brian Hulsey, Doctor of Chiropractic, of Foundations Chiropractic & Functional Medicine, on June 16th at 6pm for his June seminar on ADD/ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorders. Dr. Hulsey will be covering dietary issues that drastically affect these children along with some basic things to watch for at home and in the classroom. The primary focus of the talk will be Gluten/Dairy/Soy sensitivities and how to work with that in day-to-day life. Dr. Hulsey will also discuss treatment he can provide and how families can move forward with that.


Reservations are required. For more information about the seminar or to make reservations via phone: (503) 349-3024 or email: foundationschiropractic@gmail.com. More information about Foundations Chiropractic & Functional Medicine can be found also at http://www.foundationsbbt.com/

PLEASE NOTE:  THE SEMINAR WILL BE AT FOUNDATIONS CHIROPRACTIC **NOT** AT THE LITTLE GYM!

Major improvements to The Little Gym curriculum -- coming this Fall!

Starting this Fall, The Little Gym is launching an enhanced program structure designed to maximize the benefits of our already popular curriculum. Based on over 35 years of hands-on experience, a mountain of research and thoughtful feedback from parents like you, our 2011-2012 Season will now be broken into themed, multi-week Learning Units that lead to a natural progression of skills.


We are extremely excited about the upcoming improvements to The Little Gym curriculum for the 2011-2012 Season. One parent recently posted on our Facebook page, “How can it possibly be better than it is?!” With three-dimensional learning as the core of the improved programs, we believe you will love the new theme-based lesson plans and the benefits your children will receive each week in the multi-week Learning Units.

To answer a few common questions, starting in the fall, our Season-based program will be 40 weeks in length. This gives us the ability to have enough Learning Units to cover a large variety of areas, from new physical skills, to social skills (like sharing, taking turns, and leadership), to cognitive skills (like working on listening and creative problem solving). The multi-week Learning Units provide focus over an extended period of time to provide the best opportunity for skill and confidence growth in each of those areas.

We call the 3-dimensional learning aspect of our lesson plans – Get Moving, Citizen Kid, and Brain Boost. Every class will have elements of each, and each Learning Unit will have an overarching objective and expected results based on one ore more of those dimensions. The Learning Units will be specific to each age group and the specific development goals for that age.

The benefit to you and your children is that with lesson plans that focus on the same area for several weeks in a row, the enhanced learning environment will provide greater skill growth and greater successes in shorter time periods.

Additionally, with a 40-week season, you now can schedule your other activities around school and The Little Gym for the full school year.

We also now have four payment options you may choose from, so you may enroll via the method that works best for your family.

There is no risk to being enrolled in The Little Gym for the 2011-2012 Season. If at any point, you decide to discontinue coming to The Little Gym, for any reason, just let us know, and we will stop your payments. A pro-rated refund will be returned to you. And our fantastic make-up policy will continue to remain in place so any missed classes can be made up at your convenience.

The only thing your children might be wondering is, "Will The Little Gym still be fun?" Of course it is! It's now SERIOUS FUN! They'll be learning a ton in classes while having a blast with their friends!

Feel free to post any questions or comments you might have!

And we'll see you soon for the 2011/2012 Season! 

Something BIG is coming to The Little Gym

I love going to The Little Gym annual company "Reunion" each year.  It's partly because I get to see old friends -- gym owners who I went through "boot camp" with 6 years ago, or who I met at other regional trainings.  It's also partly because we've won the bronze-level President's Circle award each year for the past 5 years since my wife and I became owners of The Little Gym of Lake Oswego.

But a big part of why I love Reunion is because The Little Gym International is an amazing organization, and they always have a bunch of surprises for their franchisees.  Many franchisor/franchisee relationships can be very strained, but The Little Gym International does have their customers (us the owners) in mind with everything they do.

This year, Reunion was more of a training event than a rollout of best practices and new marketing initiatives.  Over the past year, The Little Gym International has been busy redesigning the curriculum of all 20 The Little Gym programs -- from Bugs (age 4 months) to Advanced Team grade school, to karate, sports skills, and dance.  Teacher Adam and I came back from Reunion with our suitcase full, with training materials and lots of notes.  We're putting the final touches on how we'll be communicating about the coming changes. Next week, we'll have more details and will be able to answer your questions.

To give you a little bit of information, starting in the Fall, all of our programs will be based on multi-week long Learning Units, with new theme-based lesson plans and a restructure of the 10-month school year program with a goal of providing more skill growth in a shorter period of time.  It's pretty cool.  Humungous!  :-)