Ballerina Base Two

Larkin started a ballet class a couple of months ago. I had nightmare images of rows of young children standing at a barre performing repetitive movements while being shouted at by a barely mobile ex-prima ballerina. Luckily, local friends with older kids directed us to a class that Larkin has loved.

Miss Tina prepares them for a performance, and the kids are introduced to the basics while learning a routine for the show. Finn, while not interested in formal lessons, has been very excited to discover that some of the ways he moves have fancy ballet names. Most notably, he now likes to announce what he's doing as he "chasses" across the room.

Larkin has been having an excellent time, and I've been amused to see how some of the things she's learning in ballet bleed over into other aspects of life.

Yesterday we were playing a board game that involves rolling a pair of dice and moving the appropriate number of spaces. At the beginning, Larkin announced that she was going to "practice ballerina counting." When, for instance, she rolled something that added up to 8, she would count out: "1-2-3, 2-2-3, 3-2." She never hesitated in her translation of the roll of the dice to ballerina base two.