Gymnastics is a sport that combines lots of different movements that require balance, coordination, flexibility, strength and endurance.
The sport of gymnastics developed from exercises used by the ancient Greeks to mount and dismount their horses. Children in year 1 will start to develop and begin to be increasingly confident in the following areas when copying a teacher led routine as well as developing their own routines using the skills listed: Traveling (moving from one lace to another), point balancing and partner balancing (holding each balance still for 5 seconds), straight jumps (forwards, sideways and backwards), star jumps, tuck jumps and half turn jumps, all using the the take off, flight and land technique. Rolling: Egg roll, pencil roll and the forwards roll, again focusing on using the correct technique taught throughout. All children will be individually pushed and encouraged to perform more challenging movements and skills such as bridges, splits and cartwheels.
Pupils should develop fundamental movement skills, become increasingly competent and confident and access a broad range of opportunities to extend their agility, balance and coordination, individually and with others.