Creative Arts - Monday

Music and Movement

PBS Skill Targeted: " Responds with body movements to changes in music's tempo, loudness, and style (e.g., starts flapping arms and stomping feet as music increases in loudness and pace)."

Activity:
Dance Baby Dance

Directions:
We do a lot of dancing around here, but until today I'd never thought of adding another, interpretive element to our dancing.

Hats Tipped to PBS Parenting for the great idea to incorporate a scarf or ribbons into our dance fest today:

Materials:

• Music on CD, tape or radio (musical suggestions: Saint-Seans' "Carnival of the Animals," Fantasia Soundtrack, Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite," Vivaldi's "Four Seasons")
• Streamer, scarf, or towel

Play music on a CD, tape or radio and ask your child to listen and think about what kind of animal or feeling the music sounds like. Ask your child to move or dance the way he or she thinks the music sounds. Your child might want to pretend about these ideas with the streamer or scarf:

• an elephant with a long trunk
• the blowing wind
• a butterfly
• a tightrope walker

Play music with a different tempo and feeling and invite your child to dance in a way that matches the new music. Music can sound like romping animals or a soft breeze.

Art

 
PBS Skill Targeted: "Uses a variety of art tools to draw, paint, sculpt and make collages, concentrating on the process rather than the product (e.g., scribble paints on butcher paper)."

Activity:
Paint in a Bag

Directions:
  I can't remember where I first saw this activity, but it has become one of our favorites around here. Ivie loves it because it involves paint and colors. I love it because it involves paint and colors with NO mess!

Too lazy to type it out myself, I lifted the following instructions from OT Activity Ideas and the pictures come from one of our past painting days.

Purpose

This activity promotes the child visual motor skills and improves finger isolation. In addition, the child also works on processing of tactile input as he moves his fingers along the paint.

Materials

Food Coloring, Shaving Cream , Tempera Paint, Ziplock Bag

Skills

Finger Isolation, Pre writing, Sensory Processing, and Visual Motor

Description

For this activity, use a gallon size Ziplock bag.

Place approximately 1/2 cup of tempera paint in the ziplock bag, remove air and seal. Work the paint around until it fill the bag. Have child make lines, shapes or letters by moving his finger along outside of bag.

As an alternative, you can use shaving cream mixed with food coloring instead of the tempera paint.


***MillionWaysMama notes: I prefer to tape the bag to the table so it doesn't slide all around. I also like to slip a white piece of paper in behind the bag, so it can feel more like Little I is painting on an actual piece of paper. 

Dramatic Play

PBS Skill Targeted: " Extends doll play with props representative of daily life (e.g., puts doll in high chair and feeds her with a spoon)."

Activity:
Your Inner Actor

Directions:
  For this activity you simply choose a book your child or children love and help them to act out the story or a scene.

I find that the books that usually work the very best for this have few characters and lots of repetition. Favorites around here include: King Bidgood's in the Bathtub, Caps for Sale and Goldilocks and the Three Bears

Simply assign parts and prompt your child to mimc the story through acting.

For example, in acting out Caps for Sale Little Miss I and I start by stacking a bunch of Daddy's baseball caps on our head and wandering through the house calling "Caps for Sale!" We pretend to fall asleep - and while she "sleeps" I steal all the caps off her head (like the monkeys in the story) we then make our way through the song and dance about "You Monkeys you, you give me back my caps!" She is little, so we don't act out the ENTIRE sequence in the story, but we do play the exchange about 3 times before she gets the caps back and then we do it all again, switching roles.

You really have to prompt a toddler through this, don't be afraid to feed them the words. It also helps to keep the book open beside you. And they may even be a little lost if this is the first time you act out a book. However, I hope you will keep trying. I believe this is an extremely important (and FUN) activity once kids get the idea. It not only supports reading, but helps them make connections outside of an immediate reading expereince, something that is crucial to their ability to enjoy reading later.