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| Dance with kites and pop them around on the parachute! |
Each month we have a different theme, which can be just about anything: yoga, animals, parachute play, beach boogie, outer space, or even the 1980s! For April, we settled on "Step Into Spring." A lot of these songs & activities could be used in storytimes as well.
At our library we start every Music 'N Movement by sitting in a circle and singing and moving to "Shake and Move" by Patty Shukla. Today was no different; the kids all know this is how we start Music 'N Movement.
We moved on to some fun songs with scarves:
"Wind, Oh, Wind"
Wind oh wind oh wind I say
What are you blowing around today?
Scarves oh scarves oh
scarves I say
Scarves I’m blowing
around today.
We then moved our scarves around to the words of " Leaky Umbrella" by Jim Gill
I picked up all the scarves and passed out kites I had made to each child. To make the kites, I took a kite coloring page image I found online, copy and pasted it into Paint, and then used the paint bucket tool to color it. I printed them on cardstock, laminated them, and taped on a bit of crepe paper.
Once every child had a kite, we danced around to "Let's Go Fly a Kite," from Mary Poppins. We found our version on Spotify (it wasn't the original).
I then got out the parachute and had the kids toss their parachute into the middle. We moved the parachute up and down and sang the following song:
Kites Go Up (Tune: Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star)
The kites go up, the
kites go down,
In and around, all over
the town
The children run and
jump and play,
Because they love a
windy day.
We then picked up all the kites and sang a few more spring-themed parachute songs:
Come Under My Umbrella (Tune: The More We Get Together)
Come under my umbrella, umbrella, umbrella,
(move parachute up and down)
Come under my umbrella, it's starting to rain
(move parachute up and down)
With thunder and lightning, and wind, and rain
(shake parachute)
Come under my umbrella it's starting to rain
(move parachute up and down)
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| Sand filled balloon "bees" fly on the parachute! |
We then got out some fantastic "bees" made by my co-worker (yellow balloons filled with sand with black stripes drawn on with a sharpie). We talked about how bees pollinate flowers and then we put the bees on the parachute and moved the parachute up and down as we sang Fuzzy, Fuzzy, Bumblebee.
Fuzzy, Fuzzy Bumblebee
Fuzzy, fuzzy, fuzzy,
fuzzy bumblebee,
bumblebee, bumblebee.
Fuzzy, fuzzy, fuzzy,
fuzzy bumblebee….
Landing on yellow!
(repeat with other colors on parachute)
This activity proved almost TOO popular; the kids were all jumping up and down underneath the parachute, trying to bop the bees and were screaming so loudly they could be heard on the complete opposite side of the building. So then we moved on with a much calmer song:
The rain is falling down. Splash!
The rain is falling down. Splash!
Pitter, patter, pitter patter,
The rain is falling down. Splash!
(gently move parachute up and down as you sing)
After we put the parachute away, we played a special garden game. We all patted our knees as we marched around the room singing the "Garden Song," a song which I invented just for this game. If you can't find a song that works, you can always invent your own!
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| Engage in some imaginary play and pretend to plant a garden with pretend seeds! |
Plant a Garden
We’re gonna plant a
garden, garden,
We’re gonna plant a
garden, garden,
We’re gonna plant a
garden,
What should we grow?
Let’s plant some
carrots, carrots, carrots
Let’s plant some
carrots, carrots,
And help them grow!
(repeat with other vegetables)
The kids then pretended to "shake" their seeds into the soil (a large piece of brown butcher paper), "cover" their seed with dirt, and "water" their garden with an imaginary watering can. My original plan was for us to march around the room and get more seed packets from other pots, but the kids were so wound up we just ended up planting the carrots and skipping the other vegetables.
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| Jump from flower to flower! |
After we finished planting our garden, we went through our obstacle course; I played a few spring themed songs ("Garden Song" by Audrey & Rick Engdahl, "Welcome to Spring" by The Kiboomers, & "Little Garden Plot" by Giggly Kids Musical Entertainment)
Our obstacle course included the following activities:
1. Jump from flower to flower (clip art images taped to the floor)
2. Crawl through the log (a mesh tunnel)
3. Weave around the trees (chairs with an image of a tree taped to them)
4. Jump over the stream (a small piece of blue butcher paper with waves drawn on)
5. Cross the garden fence (square plastic chairs turned over; a wooden beam could also be used).
Once the kids had all gone through the obstacle course a couple times we came back to together for one last song, "Ladybugs Fly" by The Kiboomers and "flew" around the room like ladybugs.
We ended up having about 25 kids attend. Looking back I might have adapted some of the activities a little bit given the size of the group, but overall they seemed to have a great time.
