Get Moving! Pre-Reading Skills for Kids Who Love to Move

by tedgar | More from this Blogger

04 Nov 2009 03:08 PM

I'm a kinesthetic learner. That means that I love, love, love to learn by moving. When I teach, I bounce around the classroom, flying like a bird and hopping like a frog. It also means that when I'm shown a picture of something and asked to do it, I absolutely cannot compute. I need to see the practical and physical applications of math or reading in order to do the task.

Often, we don't think of reading as a movement activity. However, when our preschool-aged children are beginning to read, some of them will learn best through movement. How can you help these kids learn their letters and have them move around too?

• Preschoolers love rhythm and rhyme. Play with language by making up rhymes. If you have simple instruments, make up a song, or sing one yourselves. Sing along with silly songs like Raffi's Banana Phone - songs that play with the sounds of letters. Move to the beats and sounds of the words.

• Go to a big field. If it's muddy, great. If it's snowy, even better. Trace the letters of your child's name in the field. Walk over them, stomp them down, and take a photo of them too.

• Make letters out of food. Cut sandwiches in the shapes of letters for lunch. Eat alphabet soup and extract some of the letters to make up a name or another word. Bake bread and let it rise in the shapes of letters. If you're feeling slightly less ambitious and have a little less time, make letter pancakes!

• Make clay letters. Get real clay for a truly tactile experience, or make play dough.

• Play with water and make it into letters. Go outside to a puddle, and dig little holes in the ground to make a letter. Use holes and dams to make the water flow through the letter.

• Become the sound of a letter and move to that sound. Think about an animal that might make that sound. A woodpecker might sound like a "k" repeated over and over. Say the sound and move like that animal.

For kinesthetic learners, movement is essential to learning. If you have a child who loves to move, make letter learning fun by mixing pre-reading skills and movement!

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Tricia Edgar is a mom of one lovely daughter. Before her daughter was born, she decided to be guided by the needs of her child, and this led her to attachment parenting philosophies.

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