From my experience, it seems that it's always best to start combining a
couple tricks at a time and then work up to a routine. See if you can
possibly jump to music and try to get your jumpers to start filling up eight
counts of music at a time. Then allow them to go beyond that. Technically,
you can start at any section of a routine and see if you can put those pieces
together. Try not to push your jumpers into doing routines you made up for
them, give them some guidelines maybe, depending on their skills, but let
them put skills together for themselves (especially if they're in 3rd grade
and up).

When I first started jumping, my coach had skill lists and there were
different levels. We were to have tricks from where we were in our skill
lists in our routines, maybe a couple from the section below, and one or two
to work at attaining (of course within reason).

At one point, in double dutch (and single rope too actually) I was stuck in
wanting to jump on a pogo ball (anyone remember those?), anyway, my coach
finally pulled me aside and told me that there were greater things in my
realm that were possible for me to reach. This took a lot of coaxing, but
finally I gave in and did learn a lot.

So really, just start with small goals and then build up to bigger ones,
always throwing in a challenge or two. Your skill level should go up and you
should have the beginnings of good routines. Competition between your
jumpers may work too, it certainly did for me, particularly in the beginning.
Speed scores, quality of trick performance, among other things can be
improved this way.

Please, if anyone has anything to add to what I've said, or can think of
anything that might throw anyone off, do post.

Ginny