OSEGA Gymnastics and Ninja Warrior Training — Local services in Fletcher

Looking at the positive reviews of gymnastics training here, I was confident sending my newly turned five-year-old to summer camp to give it a go. But it turned out to be one of those bare minimum "keep-em alive" kinds of summer camps, at least for us. What a waste. No direction. No info. And safety was even questionable, which I'll get to later. Hot gym, my kid's face was red and hair was drenched in sweat when I'd pick her up. Typical for summer, right? I guess. But I'm also guessing she wasn't drinking enough water -- her bottle was empty every time I'd pick her up. A practice of refilling water bottles or orienting the kids on where to go for that would help. I mean at least have a water hose to drink from :). No hand washing group practices. One day the teacher told them to use hand sanitizer before lunch but then the other days, nothing. Speaking of which, the teachers changed daily and the "classrooms," or squared off pens, also switched up, which is not particularly stable for young kids. We found out the week of camp through an email that the teacher child ratio was 14:1. And the lights were off in the gym except for two days. I think it's obvious this camp is geared more for older age groups, and just seemed to add younger kids to make money, which brings me to safety concerns.

I keep thinking I shouldn't be bothered by the following but it didn't sit right with me. One day, by happenstance, before picking up my kid, I stopped to use the air-conditioned lobby bathroom which was a hallway away and not visible from the signout desk. On the way, the employee at the counter (who I had never seen before) claimed she saw me. A few minutes later, a distraught kid came into the bathroom. It didn't seem like an adult was with them and they were struggling. When I opened my stall, I found it was my own kid standing there staring at me. Talk about mother's freaking instinct. She was in the public bathroom alone and had had an accident. For a moment I wondered if maybe they knew I was her mother and sent her in, but no, it turns out, the employee told me when asked that they "let the older kids go to the bathrooms on their own." The camp is for 4-12 year olds. 5 is an older kid? The employee asserted that she knew a stranger was in the bathroom, that she didn't know I was her mother. We were in there for 15 minutes. She also had marks on her arm which no one told me about.

Then there's the topic of gymnastics. I expected there to be some basic training/introduction, but as far as I could glean from my kid since the teachers gave us no information to go by was that she jumped on the trampoline one day, did foam pit two days, and swung on a bar two days. The balance bar was for "older kids" even though the advertising for the half day 4-5 year old camps included kids walking on balance beams.

The weekly theme was "Around the World" which meant they colored worksheets of places, including a picture of a world with a plane going around it one day, and watched Coco film the last day (with no discussion). Apparently, some guy showed them a video "on his phone" of someone dancing another day. In other words, obviously not that structured. It feels like more of a money making scheme that actually teaching gymnastics for this age group.

The orientation email made it seem like it was a strict sign in and sign out policy but that was definitely not the case in practice. I could have been anyone.

I'm giving it two stars because, again, maybe it's better for the "older kids" of which a five year old is definitely NOT. And I wrote this diatribe here since I was given no exit interview or feedback...

We showed up so my 5 year old son could do the ninja course. He had no idea how or what to do and the teacher was not helping at all. There was hardly any guidance whatsoever. I was getting somewhat frustrated because my son was just standing around and constantly being cut in line because he did not know what to do. Another teacher that was teaching a different class at the same time decided that it is Okay to yell at a kid and tell him it is disgusting after he sneezed. Then he proceeded to go and talk to the other instructors about how he need to be quarantined, etc. it was incredibly unprofessional and honestly the place was not clean at all. I am extremely disappointed and still cannot believe the way the instructors...

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