The Next Generation
What an amazing week of olympic sport! This week we saw up to 30 LadyBirds visit Dare Valley for their weekly Parent Toddler session with a twist… Woodland Olympics for our 1 – 5 year olds.
Just looking at some of the pictures (see below) and watching the fabulous scenes half way across the world of team GB racking up medal after medal; it was hard not think about how those athletes and competitors started their journey towards olympic success and where the seeds of passion and inspiration came from?
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- wood cookie
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- Gold
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- Child having fun in woods!
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- Gymnastics?
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- Stretch and throw
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- Shotput?
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- Woodland Olympics
Watching children, as young as one, simply participate in activities is a joy in itself. It also reinforces the absolute need for play and risk to be encouraged if not to inspire the next set of olympians, but certainly because children can gain so much social and physical development by participating in unstructured play and competition.
It also reminds us of many children we see at our adventure camps who crave physical activity but are not interested in the traditional rugby, football & drama pastimes – the olympics (Rio and Dare Valley) prove that there are sports, competitions & activities for all interests, talents & competitiveness.
The True Stars
In keeping with the olympic theme we have also been inspired by the competitors who haven’t won medals but really “achieved” by being in Rio.
The ‘refugee team’ has been an inspiration drawing together individuals from over 60 million people globally displaced from their home-lands, uniting to represent themselves and their nations against all huge odds.
The other story we love is about the American-Armenian, Houry Gebeshian. Houry is a gymnast for the Armenian team – as well as being a physicians assistant the rest of the time.
Quoted by the BBC ; they informed that she works nights and weekends delivering babies, and then spends her free time around that at the gym.
‘I work a 24-hour shift on Sunday and a 16-hour shift on Wednesday, but the days that I’m not working I’ll be in the gym,’ she told the BBC.
‘I get off at around 7am, I take a bit of time off work – I’ll take a nap for about three hours – and then I’ll head straight to the gym.’
Purserverance and hard work = dreams achieved.
Read more: http://metro.co.uk/2016/08/11/10-inspiring-stories-from-olympians-who-overcame-adversity-for-rio-2016-6061594/#ixzz4HQf9UbG9