MORGANTOWN -
Stepping Stones' Tiny Tikes program in Morgantown is introducing young kids to their first gymnastics experience.
For the third year, kids ages three to thirteen joined up with Stepping Stones to invade the West Virginia Gymnastics' Training Center, running, twirling, and of course – jumping.
"The majority of these kids have some spectrum of Autism, development delay, or cognitive delay," said Monica Marietta, Stepping Stone Executive Director. "They get to come here to the West Virginia Gymnastics' Training Center, they get to kind of try out all the equipment and have a good time."
For six weeks, the kids spend an hour each Friday afternoon teamed up with volunteer buddy, playing everything from parachute games, to swimming princess.
"It's the fact that it's a cool place. It's a cool place, there's a lot of cool different sensory things," said Marietta. "It's really kind of cool, to be able to just have fun and really their in a pretty safe environment where we don't have to worry about them getting hurt."
Of course, none of this is possible without the more than 20 volunteers.
"I'm a speech pathology major, and I love working with kids with disabilities, and this is just fun combined with community service so you couldn't ask for more as a college student," said volunteer Seneca Fox.
If you watch for just five minutes, you know at the end of the day those volunteers will be more tired than their ball-of-energy kids.
But they wouldn't trade a minute of it.
"Just interacting with the kids, I think that it's a really good learning experience for me and they completely enjoy it so it's nice to bring a smile to someone's face," said Fox.
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