Giants

The picture story book 'Giants' by Nick Maland was the prompt for the Tunnel Ball idea.

This is a book about empathy and letting go of assumptions and prejudices. Sweet Pea and Boogaloo take a walk through what looks like many many giants' legs.

You can find a review of it here.

Happy reading.

Music and Movement...

...go together like a Horse and Carriage. Where would Early Childhood Education be without it?

Children LOVE it, every early childhood educator would have to admit they get a kick out of it, and I am pretty sure parents dig it too.

And there are so many 'music and movement' offerings on the market - some more music than movement. Where to begin?

Here is my recommendation:

This is the blurb:
These field-tested "learning through movement" activities encourage eye-hand, aural-motor, and visual motor coordination. They also develop body image, balance, laterality, directionality, and visual perception. Easy to introduce to your class, the activities do not require partners or constant teacher direction. 

You can hear samples of each track from Perceptual Motor Rhythm Games 
Check out the track Move Like A Machine (Electronic) and Clap and Shake #1 (Ballin' The Jack) with voice cues.

I bet you won't be able to stop grinning and tapping your toes.

Have a listen and drop me a line to tell me what you think - especially if you try it on your little ones.

What about you? Do you have a recommendation you would like to share? Click on the word 'comment' at the end of the post. I would love to hear from you.

You can not stop our apple fun

We love Dr Seuss books here..they are fantastic read-aloud books.

'Ten Apples Up On Top' is a good resource for teaching numeracy as well being a good title for the early reader.

For our Preschooler however, just counting the apples on each page to concur with the text proved to be enticing.

From there, we started to look for things to balance on our heads. Fortunately, I happened to have small Bean Bags ready for just that purpose.

Balancing a Bean Bag on the head promotes good posture and develops balance and control. Head held still and eyes straight ahead are necessary reminders.

Once this is achieved, encourage walking around the room; forwards, sideways, backwards. Suggest bending down to touch the ground, turn around. Then try balancing the Bean Bag on the shoulder, elbow, knee etc.

Combining the Bean Bag balance with 'Heel-Toe walking' would present a very good challenge.

What fun!
We will not
let them fall.

We wish you lots of apple fun.

Integrated PE

Physical activity can be cleverly woven into many daily happenings.

We love 'story time' here and like many households, books are part of the 'going-to-bed' routine. But we also like to 'gather a crowd and read aloud' during the day. This is often followed by some form of story stretching activity. Many books lend itself to crafty adventures but I can often find some way to integrate PE into the session.

This is a favourite in many homes...and so I can imagine there are many different improvisations for each of the verbs used to cross the obstacles.

Incidentally, I would be interested to know what readers use for each of the scenes; scarves for the grass, a heap of cushions/river, beanbags/mud, furniture/forest, imagination-noise/wind, blanket/chairs for the cave.

But whenever we read this book aloud, we pay extra attention and take turns to role-play the bear. Getting around on hands and feet (same leg/arm) is one of many methods of locomotion that develops leg flexibility and arm/torso strength.

If enthusiasm and time permits, we go on 'seal' hunts (straight arms and hands turned in toward each other with dragging the legs along, crab hunts (on hands and feet but facing up - walking sideways) and Monkey hunts (same as bear but with opposite arms and legs). Of course, the bear, crab, seal and monkeys are always friendly and everyone goes home happy at the end of our stories.

Happy Bear hunting.