So we arrived at Gymboree, all ready for his trial class in “Level 2: Play and Learn”, which was for babies aged from 6-10 months. We entered the play floor and he looked around curiously at all the bright colors and babies around, the happy “Gymboree” music playing in the background.

For the first few minutes he was shy, not wanting to leave my lap, holding on quite tightly. But as the teacher eased into the 2nd song (they use the old standards - like “itsy bitsy”, “this old man” etc etc and put their own lyrics), he was off my lap, crawling to Gymbo the clown on the teacher’s lap, checking out the other babies and Moms by grabbing their shirt, watch, feet (oh dear).

The 45 minute class flew by - he crawled up a padded incline and was the first baby to grab the ball the the top (beating the 9-month-olds I proudly note), walked on a wooden plank then slid down on a wooly rug, played some singing games on my lap (he preferred crawling though), sang and danced (a good workout for Mum), and watched the bubbles with utter amazement - and it wasn’t until the last minute just as the goodbye song was ending did he start fussing with a few whines which signaled “ok Mummy, I’m tired now”.

The verdict? A good class for crawling babies, can be a bit rushed (as in moving from one activity to the next fairly quickly) for others especially those who aren’t very mobile yet.