the best $9.50 i've spent in a long time

With our homeschool curriculum order I ordered a 16' jump rope. I used to love jumping rope as a kid and thought Clara might too. The rope came this week and the kids have been jumping rope daily. They really love it. We've had to google jump rope rhymes because apparently I've forgotten all of the ones I knew as a kid. Right now we're working on mastering Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear.

Yesterday we went out looking for a park that had a fence I could tie one end of the rope to that was in the shade. We found this patch of shade but I totally wasn't thinking that with shade comes tree limbs.... so after whacking the lower limbs of this tree with the rope a couple of times, we moved to the edge of the shady patch. Thankfully there was a sprinkler running right behind us so the kids would run through the edge of it in order to cool off.

Now... my kids aren't that great at jumping rope yet... but they're better than these photos imply. These are the result of Alex or Clara turning the rope and lets just say that they need more work on the rope turning... sigh. :-)

Here's Clara expressing her dismay with Alex's rope turning...
and Alex's expression after being whacked in the face with the rope as he tried to jump in...
no explanation necessary...
this is how Clara tries to run into a turning rope... my goodness... I think we'll bring her helmet next time...

Seriously, this is probably the best toy for under $10 that I've found in long time!

Off to start my day! My friend and her girls are coming over for another playdate this afternoon so we should probably be out of our pj's by the time they get here! :-)