Tonya Strickland takes Two in Tow & on the Go to Paso Robles City Rec. Department
Is it just me, or does anyone else have this weird obsession with researching kids’ recreation classes? Mine aren’t in school yet, so you’ll often find me scrolling through the Paso Robles Activity Guide to see what cool family-friendly thing we want to try next. Not that I have tons of patience for kids’ classes. They’re fine when you have one child. But when you have two, there’s not much you can register them for together.
In fact, let’s take this moment to reflect on the experience of bringing a younger sibling to the older sibling’s class. Child distraction attempts include, but are not limited to:
• Watching that weird guy play with toy dinosaurs on YouTube and hoping your kid doesn’t break your phone.
• Giving your kid your car keys, only to hear your car beeping lock/unlock from the parking lot outside for the next 10 minutes.
• Scooping them up and walking around as they desperately try to wiggle out of your grasp.
So much fun, right? But the age range for Kindermusik’s “Wiggle and Grow” series is newborn to four. Boom. Disaster averted.
Kindermusik pairs musical instruments, movement and singing with the interesting little life lessons of listening, turn-taking and cause and effect.
Mom has to participate, though, which is kind of a bummer if you wanted to, say, get in any amount of glorious peace to zone out on your phone. #sorrynotsorry. But we genuinely enjoyed this class. The morning opens with a cute little circle time song where all the kids get to hear their name in the lyrics.
Then we practiced with different instruments – definitely a highlight. Because, other than our piano and maybe one rogue Fisher Price toy, we don’t have any kid musical instruments in our house. I just can’t even with the banging and ringing sounds. The kids got a kazoo recently (thanks, grandparents) and that thing was retired within a day. Because, no.
So when we got to use rhythm sticks and egg shakers to make music, and asked our children to try to copy our (simple) sequences, it was really fun and different. Then we all did a line dancing number with a partner. It was really sweet and cute and it got the kids up and moving around, which was awesome pre-naptime. All in all, we highly recommend this class.
