Gymnastics at Bedtime.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 907, 19 July 1889, Page 5

Gymnastics at Bedtime.

A West Chester correspondent of Babyhood has found an interesting way to strengthen her children's backs and ; legs. .* My plan for this result,’ she writes, ‘ takes some trouble and some time, but it pays, and, as Americans, we find theße charmed words. Every night at the little people’s bedtime, when they are all in their nightgowns, if you could peep into my nursery you would see a strange Bight. You would see everyone in the room now bowing backward and forward and sideway, now standing on tip-toe, now lying prone upon the floor and rising Blowly to a sitting posture, now twisting and turning until, if I had not confided to you in the first place that I was working for backs, you would decide I was training my youDg people for circus contortionists.

‘We make a sort of game of it. We have a leader for each evening, who counts, so that the gymnasts act in unison. Mamma is generally the leader, but if Bhe sees any little one is not well and so not able to go through the exercises, that little one does the counting and deciding who takes the head of the class, etc. Those who do best work stand at the head of the line, and if for one night their vigilance ceases, down they go to the foot of the olass, to work up again by merit and muscle. They are a merry little set cf contortionists, and twist and turn their small bodies with a will, and enjoy bedtime more than any other part of the day.