Tumbling Activities for Toddlers

Tumbling is a branch of gymnastics that is excellent for fine tuning basic motor skills in toddlers. At this age, students explore their bodies through simple and safe fundamentals. As the coach or teacher, proper instruction of the activity, safety and spotting are your main concerns. The following tumbling activities can be taught and practiced with little risk to the young student.

  1. Walks

    • Tumbling walks prepare toddlers to understand what you mean by straightening and bending your legs, and arching or lengthening your back. Bear walks consist of walking slowly on hands and feet with your legs bent. Children are instructed to walk backwards and forwards. Camel walks consist of walking on hands and feet with legs and arms straight out, rounding the back like a camel. Crab walks consist of the toddler sitting down with her hands behind her. The toddler lifts her bottom off the floor and walks forward and backward like a crab. She engages her arm and abdominal muscles and learns coordination.

    Bunny Hops

    • Bunny hops are designed to teach weight transfer and coordination between the upper and lower body. This movement involves squatting down and sitting on the heels with your elbows outside your knees. Finally, the student tucks in his chin and hops like a bunny. This orients the tumbler to perceiving space upside down, as he will when he advances to cartwheels, flips and other advanced gymnastics movements.

    Rock 'n' Roll

    • The rock 'n' roll movement comes before full forward and backward rolls. The student lies on the ground in the tuck position. Start by asking the student to rock back and forth with her back rounded, holding her knees in tight to her chest. When she has this movement down, spot her as she rolls backward onto the back, then forward up onto her feet in a standing position. This gets the student comfortable with the idea of full rolls and teaches her to relax her spine.

    Sequences

    • When a toddler tumbling student learns more than one tumbling move, the instructor helps him to piece these moves together into a sequence, an important piece of the gymnastics performance. Sequences take place across the floor of a tumbling mat. The teacher calls out a movement such as crab walk, then rock 'n' roll, then bridge, then bunny hops. As the student becomes more comfortable switching between moves, the smoothness of his transitions increases as well as his comfort with each individual move.