We’ve made it through the first week of our Gift Guide, which means a few things:

A) We’re halfway there!
B) Christmas is ever inching closer. How’s the shopping going?

If you need to catch up on previous days, you can do so here:

Day Four: Drill Paper
Day Three: Pose Book for Marching Bands
Day Two: Pyware Clinic
Day One: UDBapp

Before you head off for the weekend, let’s talk about the Marching Step Guide. This floor mat, put simply, is brilliant.

The Marching Step Guide is a training aid designed to assist your marching members in developing muscle memory for the main step sizes used by today’s marching programs. On the mat, you can find step size indicators for an 8 to 5, 6 to 5, 12 to 5, or 4 to 5. Hash marks are printed on the mat for reference points, and the mat can comfortably fit up to 6 marchers per exercise.

Forwards and backwards basics are a given on the mat, but the intuitive design of the Marching Step Guide also allows practice of slides, crab stepping, change of direction, and squaring corners.

For more information, go check out the Marching Step Guide website.

If anyone knows the girl in the middle, please tell her to bring close-toed shoes to rehearsal tomorrow.

Have a great weekend, and tune in Monday for week 2 of our Gift Guide!