Excel Gymnastics in Batavia And St. Charles

Place: Excel Gymnastics
Location: 2301 Main Street in Batavia, or 3N800 Peck Rd in St. Charles.
Type of Place: Gymnastics academy
Secret: This place has a trapeze bar that kids will love! Also, they've created a very cool tunnel underneath the foam block pit with the trapeze bar, for kids to crawl through!
Appropriate ages: toddler and up.
Cost: Special open gyms for kids under 6 are $5.00 per kid. Open gyms for older kids are $8.00 for members and $10.00 for nonmembers.

Quite a long time ago, I used to bring Little Bear and Pufferfish, along with their cousin Tigerlily, to this gymnastics place with a trapeze bar. They really loved it, especially Tigerlily, who used to swing on the trapeze for hours! Somehow I forgot where it was, and Pufferfish and I have been visiting all sorts of open gyms in search of this very cool one. Well, we finally found it! Yesterday, we went back there to check it out. Monkeyboy, who had the day off from school for some reason, came with us.
The first thing Pufferfish wanted to check out was this spot where little kids can slide down the slide and land in a pit of foam blocks! You can also jump off mats and into the blocks. It is a little bit like swimming!

They have a balance beam suspended across the other end of this foam pit, which is the perfect place to practice on the balance beam. If you fall off, you just land in foam! Pufferfish loved it as long as Monkeyboy held her hand... but she preferred just saving time and jumping off of it!

Here is Pufferfish trying out a lower balance beam with no foam pit underneath.

There was some other fun equipment scattered around too, like this barrel that Monkeyboy rolled Pufferfish around in...

 

...and this thing that helps kids do a flip onto a mat!

I was most excited about the trapeze bar, but Pufferfish didn't enjoy it as much as I thought she would. She's actually less brave now than she was the last time I brought her there, when she was only a year old! I couldn't get her to try out the trapeze bar. So I took a picture of it anyway, just in case you didn't believe me about it being there. Can you see it? The yellow rectangle is around the trapeze bar, and the blue one is around the rope swing. Kids can swing on these things and then drop into the foam pit!

Another thing that I liked about Excel, more so than other places, was that they had some employees in the gym. The kids still had to be supervised by parents, and the employees weren't teaching them or coaching them or anything, but they were there, and they were very friendly. They would smile and say cheerful things to the children, like, "Look at you jumping!" and "Are you having fun?" It was more of a welcoming atmosphere, instead of the feeling of, "What are you civilians doing in our gym?" that I've gotten in some other gymnastics open gyms.
When school gets out for the summer, I will be taking my whole crew there as often as I can. I know this one isn't exactly in DuPage, but its on the border... and even if you live forty-five minutes away from it, like we do, I think it is worth the drive!

Gymnasti in Carol Stream (Open Gym)

Place: Gymnasti
Location: 110 Della Court, in Carol Stream (off of Gary Ave.)
Type of Place: Gymnastics academy
Secret: Check the website for the open gym schedule, which will be changing in June. Supposedly they have a moon jump set up pn Fridays, although we didn't see it!
Appropriate ages: Toddlers and older!
Cost: The preschool open gyms are $5.00 per child. Other open gym days are $5.00 for members and $10.00 for nonmembers.

Every weekend I list free and cheap events for the week ahead. Gymnasti's open gym is always on the list for Fridays, but I had never actually been there. (We've gone to just about every other gymnastics open gym in the area, though.) So this past Friday, I grabbed Pufferfish and went to check it out!
Many gymnastics academies host open gyms so that their students, and other interested kids, can practice their gymnastic skills in an unstructured environment outside of their regular gymnastics classes. But Gymnasti also hosts "little kid" open gyms for toddlers and preschools. With kids this little, unless they are actually in the gymnastics class, the thrill is mostly in jumping on the trampolines and exploring the other equipment.
One thing I noticed about Gymnasti was that there was an area with a huge, deep pit (not filled with foam blocks or anything) that the employee warned us to stay away from. I was paranoid the whole time about Pufferfish not watching where she was going and falling into the pit of doom! (I guess it wasn't that deep. She probably wouldn't have broken her neck or anything. But it would have been hard to get her out!)
The rest of it was fun, though. Pufferfish loved jumping into the foam pit. (Warning: If you are a grown up, you might not want to jump into the foam pit! It is pretty hard to get out of! Little kids are too light so they just kind of crawl on top of the foam.)

There was a rope swing which she tried to swing on, after she saw another little kid clamor all the way to the top. Pufferfish had trouble getting on it, though!

She liked hanging onto the rings for a minute, although when I took this picture, she was telling me, "I'm gonna fall!"

She always loves the balance beams, too. Usually she needs me to hold her hand as she walks along on them... but she has great balance!

Pufferfish even tried to do a trick, after she saw another kid (the same one who climbed the rope) doing flips on the bar. Maybe she'll be a gymnist some day!

Her favorite was the trampoline though. She could start on one end, run all the way down the trampoline, and jump onto a big, squishy mat! This delighted Pufferfish to no end. At one point, though, she slipped while trying to climb onto the trampoline, and landed smack on her back! It was a horrid sound! The employees came rushing in, demanding to know whetherPufferfish had jumped off the wrong end. I scooped her up while I explained that she had only slipped while trying to climb onto the correct end. The employees turned and walked away without another word... something I found a little rude! It didn't seem like they were very comfortable around small, non-gymnist children at all.
Pufferfish was fine, though. For a few minutes she didn't want to do anything but sit on the mat and watch the older kids. But after a while she said, "Come on, I want to go on the trampoline again!"

The website claimed that there would be a moon jump set up on Friday afternoons, which would have made the whole thing more fun for Pufferfish. But there was no moonjump in sight! Oh well... maybe in the summer they'll have it.
My overall impression is that this place is more geared towards older kids or kids who are actually taking gymnastics classes. It was a nice place for Pufferfish to bounce around a little... but there are some even nicer open gyms available for the same price. It might be worth trying out, though, if you live in the Carol Stream area!