Moving to music encourages brain development, vocabulary growth, social skills, and stress regulation in children. Read Scrambled Eggs Super and explore the impact of adding extra ingredients to your egg mix. Peter T Hooper went for things like ginger and prunes – but you might prefer grated cheese. Why not turn your eggs and ham green, or even blue, with a little colouring? Design an investigation to discover what people think about food that isn’t the right colour, then display your results as graphs and charts. In music and movement, children learn to predict what happens next. Balance, Coordination, and Rhythm This is a cute Raffi song for which kids join in to sing and take part in the movements. They shake, clap, jump, and finally yawn. This song is also available as a picture book. 24. Move to the Beat

You can find more recipe ideas, such as ‘Beautiful Schlopp and Pink Ink Yink Drink’ at Seussville. A load of old nonsense When asked for ideas on how to solve a problem in real life or in imaginary situations, such as in a story, they can often express their ideas more easily through movement and physical expression. Creativity and Imagination Turn on the music and tell children they must “dance” only with the body parts you specify. They might wiggle their fingers, swing their right legs, or twirl their left arms. 9. Feather Dancing A limited and repeated vocabulary makes Dr Seuss’s books accessible to beginner readers. Learn some of the text in Green Eggs and Ham and The Cat in the Hat by heart and perform it.To play freeze dance – also called musical statues– play musical favourites for the kids as they dance or move around the room as specified. Kids practise sounds of the letters of the alphabet along with Dr. Jean. Singing along, they use their bodies to show the actions, such as cutting, digging and hopping. 11. Musical Letters

Tanka Tanka Skunk by Steve Webb is one of my personal favourites. Tanka is the elephant and his friend Skunka a skunk. The book doesn’t follow a story or plot of some sort, but is more about words, musicality and rhythm. They call upon their memories and past experiences each time they meet a new opportunity for movement and song. Problem Solving Overall, the book is a great one for chanting along. The accompanying Symphony Storytime video features wonderful use of percussion. 16. Tissue Dance Make a collection of hats and put each one inside a cardboard box. Label the boxes ‘HAT belonging to the CAT’.It also offers the opportunity to consolidate known language, extend and enrich language and support children’s wider development of oral language including using adjectives to create expanded noun phrases. Children can explore and investigate concepts from the text as part of continuous provision, supported by a well-resourced environment with access to name cards, instruments, small world play, role play and art. They also gain a new or wider appreciation for the tunes and movements of their own cultures. Pre-Maths Skills While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. rich source of fun and learning. It provides a motivating way to develop children’s auditory discrimination, a key early literacy experience, by drawing attention to the beats (chunks, syllables) in words. It also offers clear links with the music curriculum. The wonderfully rhythmic text offers a wealth of opportunity to teach, consolidate and apply a range of concepts that support children’s early phonological and reading development.

Dr Seuss loved playing with words and inventing new ones. Try making some new sounds and work out how to write them down. Read The Lorax and find the invented words (eg gruvvulous, snergelly and rippulous). What do they mean? How can you tell? Invent some words to describe everyday objects. Which would you use in a poem, and why?

This kids’ favourite combines singing and performing movements with both hands. In addition, Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes also enhances body awareness in youngsters. 26. Clean Up Song Challenge kids to clap hands, snap fingers, or stomp feet for each syllable in names or other words sung/chanted. Music and movement in preschool are integral aspects of the daily routine and can be incorporated easily at home, as well. In addition, they practise listening when learning new words or movements modelled by adults or leaders. Memory Skills

Kids learn by doing. Music and movement activities give them more opportunities to combine motor skills with the senses of sight, hearing and touch. Small Motor Skills In addition, regular exposure to music and movement can help kids manage their emotions, which is an important part of their emotional development. Play different types of music samples. Ask kids to dance in ways that fit with the mood of each kind of music played. 14. Zoom, Zoom, ZoomThe Once-ler lives in a Lerkim. Design your own Lerkim and label its special features. Perhaps you could build a Lerkim den in the school grounds – or make one in your reading corner using a clothes airer and old curtains! A den needs gadgets. What can you invent? Make a whisper-ma-phone using cans and string, and send messages. Can you improve it in any way? Write instructions for the Once-ler, telling him how to make and use a whisper-ma-phone. Each child has a partner, and they take turns. To happy music, the first one moves, and the other child tries to copy that movement.