Gymnastics festival

I can't Believe it! The Gymnastics Festival was on Tuesday, and we got callbacks!Box was up first, and so was I.  We each, (Me, Lola, Charlotte, Alivia, And Aria,)  had one warm up, and then, BAM!!  I was over, and it was done!  I sat down and watched as Alivia, Lola, Charlotte, and Aria Each made it over.  Charlotte's score 8.4.  So was Lolas.  Then there was Aria´s, If I hadn´t already told you, she's a really good  gymnast.  Her score was 9.4!!! (Out of 10.)   Next we had beam.  Aria was so good at it.  She did her routine flawlessly.  Lola and Charlotte forgot the Arabesque, Me and Alivia remembered it and did it pretty well. I forgot our scores for the beam. Last but not least was floor.  I was up first, again. I could tell it was way to short, but they still gave me 8.00. That was good enough for me.  Aria was the best, and Lola, Charlotte, and Alivia did it well to.

After about 2 or 3 hours we had rhythmical.  Alivia was our cheerleader, Even though she forgot to cheer. We did our start, and our end, and all of what was in between.   While we did our bow I could hear the crowds cheering.  Somehow, we got into callbacks, and it was amazing fun.

Callbacks were on Wednesday night.  We had to wait for about 2 hours and 20 minutes.  We got to watch all the best gymnasts as a group, and as a solo.  We were about the 3rd to last act.  The crowds were even bigger than last time, and the cheering was thundurus.  the reason the crowd was bigger was because the intermediates and high schools did it to, and most people in every family showed up.  It was extremely fun!! bye🥇

Intense Times

With the Gymnastics festival edging closer were working harder than ever.  We only have 3 days of practice left, I've began practicing Day in, and day out. With A-Grade in the morning, and rhythmical at morning tea, and lunch, Were doing a lot.  All the free time we have is going to gym.  

My Rhythmic teacher is panicking, because we don't know the entire dance yet.  We've booked out the gym for friday, 12.40 pm-2.15 pm.  Our dance is getting better, and we have a few more tricks.

Our practice is getting more and more squashed because were rushing to finish the dance.  We practice quite often now, as we do all the things we need to.

I can't believe It!! In A-grade, we know all our routines of by heart. YAY!!!  We started learning it and practicing it last week. Only 5 people from our school are in A-grade, and yet we all got it so Quickly.  Aria is soooo dainty with her beam, and floor.  We ALL just stare at her while she practices.  she's much better than the rest of us,  she's the best in the School!!  I'm getting more and more nervous about my floor routine, we have, well, had, to make it up!!

With so much going on, all of it based around gymnastics, people are getting more and more nervous.  I wonder how it will all turn out.  Tune in next week to find Out!

Our school!!

Gymnastics Fun

 This week me, and the rest of my school have been focusing on gym.  The Gisborne Primary schools gymnastics festival is coming up, and we want to be ready.  We´ve all chosen the group out of A-Grade, B-Grade and C-Grade.  (There's also A reserve but no one is in that group.)  We´ve been training for about 2 school weeks now, and we are getting more, and more competitive.

This year I chose to be in A-Grade and Rhythmical.  Rhythmical is a sort of gym dance.  I started off as a back up, but improved so much, I think, that I´m in the actual dance!!  Maybe  I was the whole time, Who knows?  Well,  we´ve learnt most of the dance and a couple of tricks.  It's really exciting to be learning so fast in so little time.  We've started needing to bring our water bottles to practice.  Lola's the ringmaster, and Aria is doing a very cool trick, in the middle of the dance!  

This morning I had my first A-Grade practice.  When it was just us, Lola, Alivia, Aria, Charlotte and I  there, in the hall,  Charlotte, Lola and Alivia and I  were trying to learn how to do a front handspring, Aria was our instructor. I didn't have much luck, Lola managed some, and Alivia and Charlotte were very close.  When our teacher came in to teach us, we practised the beam.  I am by far the worst at it, Especially at getting on.  Then we practised the box.  No one had much luck at first, but we all got there. We did the straddle jump.

Thank you for reading my Blog! Bye.

The First HIGHLAND DANCE Lesson

Discovery 

On Fridays in my school we do a thing called discovery.  That's when teachers put up activities on
slides and other teachers read those out loud to their class.  Children are aloud to do these things t
oo, make a slide and let teachers read them to the classes so they can go to these activities and last
week that's what I did.  I go to highland dancing lessons on Wednesdays but haven't been recently
because of the lock down.  The lessons haven't started again yet, so I'm holding them myself at schools
on friday.  I'm going to tell you about the first lesson.

Positions 

Once discovery started I got myself ready. The music came off my chromebook most of the time,
at the beginning it came out of a speaker.  When the group got there I turned on the music. 
That's when I taught them the first step. Of course I had to teach them the positions, first position was
feet out like a V. Second position was one foot out like a V but the other pointing to the side, and the
last position I taught them was third position, that's when you have big toe to big toe.  They are quite
simaler to ballet positions and there are more positions but that's all I taught them.  

The dance 

First step is the easiest step.  You hop on one foot arm in the air, with your middle finger on your thumb.
  I was pretty impressed by how well they did.   I had a few come and go throughout the lesson and the
one that stayed out of those people was the best in the group. They all did pretty well in the first step,
they did pretty well in the second step to.  The third step was a bit trickier.  It was called toe-heal,  they
all got confused when I started doing it.  Then when I explained it and they had copied me one or two
times they understood.  With the last step they got it right away, but they were really tired by then. 
By the time they managed to get we were all tired.  I said they were allowed to get a drink if they
wanted but they didn't.  They wanted to learn how to do some skipping that goes with another
highland dance called the jig. (That's what I´ĺlbe teaching them this week.)  they were really happy. 
Hopefully this week will be just as successful.

What I learnt

THis was what I wanted to write about because of what I learnt.  I learnt to teach people and how hard it
can be.  I was also learning how amazing others abilities are compared to mine. 
Lastly I learnt more of what I already know.  I just got better at highland dancing. 
That is what I found amazing about it.

THE END

Here´s a photo from at the beginning of the
lesson with my friend Cornelia dancing in the lead!!
She was a big help.