Monday's Skipping Club

We have been working really hard to perfect our skipping. We were delighted with our new skipping ropes and have enjoyed learning lots of new tricks and routines during our skipping sessions on Monday. Take a look at our procedure for 'Learning How to Skip' below and join in with us! It's great fun and super exercise!

Learning to Skip

Children learn to jump before they can hop or skip.  Skipping is a difficult skill to learn.  It involves the legs and arms performing different tasks at the same time.  Rhythm and timing are extremely important.  Some children find it easier to learn to skip on the spot while others find it easier to learn to skip on the move (e.g. like they are walking). 

Below are some activities you can try.  Try to do them in the order that they are presented in as this will make it easier, but if your child easily achieves one task, move onto the next one. 

Activity Ideas

Before you can learn to skip they need to be able to:

1. Jump/hop over a rope laid on the floor.
2. You need to be able to hold and turn the rope without worrying about jumping.
3. Jump on the spot 10 times or hop from one foot to the other staying in the same place 10 times.
4. Move your arms and legs at the same time e.g. doing star jumps.
5. Time your jump/hop – can you jump/hop in time with the beat? Use music with a strong beat.

Practice each of these steps individually before trying to co-ordinate them.

Make sure you have more than enough space to swing the rope.

You should start with the rope held in both hands so that it touches the ground behind you.  Lift your arms so the rope lifts up and swings against your legs.  Do this 5-10 times.

Bring the rope up over your head so that it lands in front of you.

Once you can do this you can start to jump or step over the rope.  Go really slowly.  Wait for the rope to stop before you jump or step over it.

Once you have mastered the process you can start to speed up.  They could try skipping to music to help them establish a rhythm.

Extra Challenges

Once you can skip you could try the following activities:

1. How many skips can they do in a row?  Count them, and then see if you can beat their record the next time.
2. See how many skips you can do in two minutes.
3. Try skipping and moving at the same time or skipping on the spot (depending on how you learnt to skip).
4. Skipping round obstacles.
5. Race with a friend.
6. Can they do any tricks? Skipping backwards, crossing the rope.