I am always looking for new listening games in the hope that some of it will rub off on my girls and they will clean up their toys the first time I ask them! :) Not really, but I do think listening is an extremely important skill for learning music and for life in general and it is always important for children to have fun while learning.
I wrote about this listening game for Dandelion Magazine, afree quarterly magazine that serves as a resource for Bay Area and Sacramento families of children with special needs. You can read my post, Where am I? A Fun Listening Game at godandelion.com.
Today is Finger Play Fun Day and we are doing a children's song that everyone knows - The Alphabet Song!
But the reason I am featuring this well known children's song is to emphasize the sign language that can be taught to children as they sing the song.
Many children learn by doing an action with their body. Making finger signs for each letter helps them learn the alphabet that much quicker and easier.
All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in a Children's Song
Today, I have listed 10 skills that children can learn through a children's song. There are certainly more than 10 but I thought this was a great place to start. I actually wrote this post for Dandelion Magazine's Blog over at GoDandelion.com and hope you will go there to read the list of skills and song ideas.
Today's Finger Play Fun Day is a fun song with lots of animals sounds! The Good Day Song, is also known as When Cats Get Up in the Morning.
In the video I sing about a cat, a dog and a bee but you can sing about all kinds of animals and what they say when they get up in the morning. I used finger puppets but this is another great song for making hand signs for different animals.
After my girls and I sing about a bunch of animals, we often start putting family members' names in the verses and make up what each person says in the morning.
Today's post has some great ideas on practicing listening skills by following the cuckoo bird throughout a few fun symphony pieces. I write a few times a month for Dandelion Magazine's Blog at www.godandelion.com .
Summer vacation is over and school has begun. Fall and apple season is on the way!
The Apple Tree is the finger play for today's Finger Play Fun Day.
This is a simple finger play that my students always want to repeat and do again. I made some cute little apple finger puppets out of felt but these are not necessary for doing the finger play! Plain fingers do just as well.
Carolyn, at Wise Owl Factory, has created free worksheets: Counting Apples-Counting and Skip Counting. These are wonderful for children to practice counting by 2's and by 3's. One worksheet has the children circling apples and then going back and counting the groups. Another worksheet has the children filling in missing numbers.
.jpg "Another Fun Listening Game!")
.jpg "Finger Play Fun Day: The Good Day Song")
.jpg "Finger Play Fun Day: The Apple Tree")
