Getting Outside: Jump Rope

With one jump rope, even the littlest ones have tons of fun on the tundra.

We played “horse”; Lia being a particularly diligent little horse, who even ate imaginary carrots.

Then, of course, Viv skipped to her only jump-rope rhyme: “Cinderella, dressed in yellow; went upstairs to kiss a fellow…” Yup. That’s the only jump-rope rhyme she knows. And I can’t rack my brain for any other rhymes besides “Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear”. So, I pulled our “Anna Banana” book off the shelf in search of one or two redeeming rhymes we could use as we skip. As it turns out, it’s hard to find a jumping rhyme that doesn’t include kissing or violence (‘Remember “My ma and your ma hanging out the clothes? Yup, my ma gave your ma a punch in the nose!” This was a new one to me that gave me the shivers:  “Charlie Chaplin sat on a pin. How many inches did it go in? One, two, three, four…” Yikes!)

Here are some good ones we do like…

MY favorite: “Tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, peas. Mother said to eat lots of these. One, two, three, four…”

The GIRLS’ favorite: “Candy, candy in a dish! How many pieces do you wish? One, two, three, four…”

“I’m a little Dutch girl

Dressed in blue.

Here are the things I like to do:

Salute to the captain,

Bow to the queen,

Turn my back on the submarine.

I can do the tap dance,

I can do the split,

I can do the hokey pokey

Just like this.”

Tie one end of the jump rope to a post and squiggly the jump rope over the ground like a river: “All in together, girls. How do you like the weather, girls” January, February, March, April…” (The girls jump over the rope when you say the month they were born.)