If a typical summer day for your child includes watching TV, eating, and sitting around the house, then My Gym Chantilly might be a healthy alternative.
MY GYM CHANTILLY is a fun-filled gym specially designed for kids from the ages of 6 weeks to 9 years old. Located at 4300 Chantilly Shopping Center across from the Dulles Expo Center, My Gym Chantilly incorporates games which develop balance, fine motor skills, and other necessary developmental skills.
"The purpose we have here is to introduce physical activity at as early an age as possible," said Director Misty Keller. "We try to encourage physical activity, finding gross motor skills development, physical and social development."
My Gym Chantilly, which opened in September of 2003, offers a variety of activities. "A lot of the games we do are really cool," said Keller. "We play a game called king of the hot dog where we work on the kid's balance by standing on top of the hot dog, and they actually get to knock their friends off and knock each other," she said.
"We do a game called bubble storm for all the age groups, so for the younger ones, it just bubbles and they pretend it is a storm," she added. "For the older ones we play it more as ghost busters."
HOWEVER, the activities also have other goals. "Everything in the gym has a purpose," said Keller. "For instance, we have the balance beam where the kids work on their balance; we do gymnastics to work on the kid's climbing; we do things called adventures where it might be ring toss — so we're working on colors, shapes, fine motor skills."
Children participate in games like Animal Relay where children pretend to be their favorite animals and act it out as they switch lines in a relay, or Freeze Tag where kids have to run and work to freeze all the kids playing the game. Other activities include Color Tag, Musical Hula Hoops, Red Light/Green Light Challenge, Snowball Game, and many more.
According to Joe Gilley, owner of My Gym Chantilly, there are approximately 65 children currently signed up for the summer camp program. The largest age group is the 1 1/2 to 3 1/2-year-old group. For this age group parents are more than welcome to participate with their children. For the older age groups the ratio is five participants for one staff member. "My Gym is dedicated to making the exercises fun and exciting so that they don't even realize they are exercising, thus incorporating fitness into their lifestyles at an early age," said Gilley.
JOEY POWELL, 4 1/2, of Vienna, is one of the summer campers. When asked if he liked the program, he enthusiastically said, "Yes!" He also said that his favorite piece of equipment is the trampoline and he could bounce on it "seven times."
Rachel Sterling, 3 1/2, of South Riding, has been a member of the gym since she was 1 year old. When asked about her favorite activity, she said: "The ball pit and space flight." Space flight runs on a pulley system that the children can't let go of. They fly on a cable across the room.
Rachel's mom Jen, who has been a member since her daughter was 1, says: "It's absolutely the best thing we did. I just love having her here."
For children with special needs, My Gym Chantilly can make accommodations. Keller stated, "We've tried to open a special needs class strictly for kids with special needs. We didn't have enough children to have a full class but we do allow any child to participate in any class. We would make accommodations to put the child in the class that best suits them."
There is a free guest class for children to sample My Gym Chantilly. Go to www.my-gym.com/chantilly.