Studio3Music Blog

Posts Tagged ‘games’

Apr
19

I found my hands. Let’s play some games!

Posted in Child Development, Games for Babies, parenting, Things to do

Classic "Airplane Baby"

4 to 6 months
One of the biggest changes that will occur during these months is that the parts of your baby’s brain that coordinate sight and touch are now integrating the incoming sensory information. This enables your baby to figure out where her hands are in space (thanks to the proprioceptive system), and make them do what she wants.

With the beginnings of depth-perception, this sight/touch sensory integration means he can reach for an object and pick it up. By about 6 months, he is also able to rotate his wrists, and thus manipulate objects.

What to watch for: These are the signs that your baby’s brain is organizing sensory input exactly as it should.

Banging objects and toys. (Against the floor, or two objects together.)
Spontaneous bringing together in a clapping motion of her hands in front of her body. This is the first sign of coordination between both sides of her body. To assist in this developmental milestone, you can play clapping games with your baby even before she can play them by herself.

Ram Sam Sam is a children’s song that originated in Morocco, and was a favorite clapping game of my children when they were infants and toddlers, especially on the changing table. You can listen to the song here,

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and download it directly at play.kindermusik.com.

A ram sam sam, a ram sam sam (clap your baby’s hands or feet together as you sing)
Guli guli guli guli guli (roll your baby’s hands or bicycle his legs)
ram sam sam (clap your baby’s hands or feet together as you sing)
A ram sam sam, a ram sam sam (clap your baby’s hands or feet together as you sing)
Guli guli guli guli guli (roll your baby’s hands or bicycle his legs)
ram sam sam (clap your baby’s hands or feet together as you sing)
A ra-vi, a ra-vi (lift your baby’s arms over his head, or fold his legs up toward his head)
Guli guli guli guli guli (roll your baby’s hands or bicycle his legs)
ram sam sam (clap your baby’s hands or feet together as you sing)
A ra-vi, a ra-vi (lift your baby’s arms over his head, or fold his legs up toward his head)
Guli guli guli guli guli (roll your baby’s hands or bicycle his legs)
ram sam sam (clap your baby’s hands or feet together as you sing)

Touch Me
As babies begin to coordinate sight and touch, they delight in “touching” games. Here’s a fun naming game to play. (And yes, babies can begin to learn body part labels, even if they can’t yet speak the words!) I found many versions of the lyrics brought to the US by immigrants from all over Europe. Many people commented that this was a beloved touch game played with grandparents, even at 4 or 5 years of age. Here are a couple of versions:

Here is where the coachman sits (touch baby’s forehead)
Here is where he cracks his whip (touch bridge of nose)
Eye winker (touch or circle one eye)
Tom tinker (touch or circle the other eye)
Nose breather (touch nose)
Mouth eater (touch mouth)
Chin chopper (touch chin)
Gully, gully, gully (tickle under chin)

Here sits the Lord Mayor (touch baby’s forehead)
Here sits his two men (touch eyes)
Here sits the rooster (touch cheek)
Here sits the hen (touch other cheek)
Here sits the chickens (touch nose)
Here they run in (touch mouth)
Chin-chopper, chin-chopper,
Chin-chopper, chin! (tickle under chin)

Airplane Baby
At about 6 months, a baby on his tummy really feels the pull of gravity, which gives baby a strong desire to lift up his head, neck, upper back, arms and legs all at the same time, resulting in the classic “airplane” position.

Babies at this age want and need to have their vestibular systems stimulated by rocking, swooshing, twirling, swinging and other similar movements. One word of caution – every person (grownups, too!) has a level of moment they can tolerate, and it’s different for everyone. If your baby begins to cry during a moving game, this means that the play has become too rough or wild for your baby’s vestibular system to handle, and the level of play is actually causing her brain to disorganize.

Hold your baby firmly around her body, tummy down, in a horizontal position. Take off! Fly your baby around the room, swooshing, dipping, spinning, rolling, starting, stopping as it pleases your baby. Be sure to make airplane sounds! If you would like some musical inspiration, download Run and Jump/Soaring from play.kindermusik.com.

As your baby turns into a toddler and preschooler, lie on your back on the floor and bend your knees with your feet off the floor. Have your child place his tummy against the bottoms of your feet. Hold onto your child’s hands. Lift your child up towards the ceiling as you raise your feet and fly!

-posted by Miss Analiisa, whose 9 year old Rob would love to still play airplane on her feet, but at 86 pounds, would likely crush the lift-off mechanism.

Tags: babies, brain, games, kindermusik, learning, Miss Analiisa, physical development, sensory systems, Things to do, touch, vestibular system

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Aug
3

Sink, or Float?

Posted in Bits and Pieces, Child Development, Games for Babies, Things to do

Learning about “order” in the world is a fascinating subject for children. He learns about physics and the law of gravity when he drops the spoon from the high chair. She discovers the wonder of plants when she watches a seed turn into a flower.

Here’s a fun summer activity for babies, all the way up through preschoolers.

Get a plastic tub (the kind you use to wash dishes in while camping works great), and fill it with water. Find a variety of objects that either sink or float or both. Sponges, plastic animals, a plastic bowl, a wooden spoon, a rubber duck, a ball, a small strainer (look in your utensil drawer for ideas), ice cubes, a hotel sized bar of soap.

If you add a squeeze of dish soap after you’ve filled the washtub with water, show your child how to whip up a froth of bubbles with the wooden spoon or a whisk.

You might even buy some colored bath tablets, and let your child pick two colors. What happens when he drops in the first one? What happens when he adds the second? (Of course, you know the answer – the point is for your child to discover the “order” of the color wheel.)

Then let her experiment and learn. About the order of things that sink. Or float. Or both.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who at times wishes she could simply experiment and play with the order of things, rather than always having to make things orderly. Like the living room, before the cleaner comes.

Tags: babies, games, learning, Miss Analiisa, parenting, preschoolers, Things to do, toddlers

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Jul
23

Free Outdoor Activities

Posted in Bits and Pieces, Family, parenting, Things to do

We’ve had this gorgeous summer weather for the past two weeks yet all I seem to hear from my kids is “Can I play a video game?”

I realized that when my kids start asking to play electronics too often, it just means they need a little motivation to go outside. So I have come up with a little list of things that occupy their time, entice them outdoors and entertain for hours (okay, so maybe only thirty minutes, but happily playing children for thirty minutes can feel like hours to a mom in need of reprieve.)

Here are a few free or next-to-nothing activities to get the kids playing outside:

Piles of wood. I pick it up at construction sites (there’s usually a dump bin that you can pull wood out of for free) or I go to the back of the local hardware store, to their lumber department, where there is “clearance” wood…usually 50 cents for a 2 x 4. Here are some things we’ve done with our wood collection:

Leave it in the dirt in the back yard: they’ll build construction sites, cities, and forts simply by piling the wood up. The older two will make roads for The Little Mister to drive his cars on. Once we used the wood to build an obstacle course.
Buy some cheap paint and let them paint the wood.
Give them some nails and a hammer (adult supervision if they’re young) and let them pound away.

Cardboard: We go to our local Costco and get these sheets of free cardboard that we turn into all sorts of things. You find this cardboard in between the “cases” of toilet paper. Their warehouse-brand toilet paper comes in on a pallet and between each row is a sturdy layer of cardboard that is approximately 4 ft x 2.5 ft (other brands of toilet paper have a less-study cardboard layer that I don’t recommend for fort making). Anyway, every time we go to Costco, we get a few pieces of cardboard sheets. Give them to your kids with some tape, some markers, and a knife if your kids are old enough, and the ideas are endless. We’ve built boats, forts, fire engines, houses…the list goes on. They even invented a game that transformed the pieces into imaginary “islands” that we had to jump to.

Cardboard boxes: Another freebie from our warehouse store. After we check out, we check out the supply of boxes that are kept near the cash registers. Last week we snagged a few boxes that are now serving as homes for two dogs (stuffed) and a Zuzu pet. With a few markers, cardboard boxes can also transform into fire engines, barns or houses.

Rocks: One of our all time favorite outdoor projects: coloring rocks. When they’re young (say The Little Mister’s age), we use chalk. As they get older, they graduate to watercolor paints and then tempura paints. Keep a small box of paint supplies handy and when the kids need something to do outside, bring out the box and let ‘em go. If you play your cards right and collected a box on your last trip to the warehouse store, you will also have a place to store these painted rocks. Incidentally, if you don’t have rocks in your yard you can buy them at a gardening store or, even better and cheaper, pick some up next time you’re at a park or beach that does have rocks.

Play Picnic: Grab a couple boxes of crackers, cheese, water and pickles (or whatever your kids like to eat) and have them set up a picnic for themselves (and you.) I have a plastic tub that contains an old tablecloth, misc plastic silverware and plates and a few odds and ends Adrienne has added to the box. I ask them to please set up a picnic for our afternoon snack anywhere they choose. Once you head out to the picnic they’ve prepared, be sure to bring a read aloud book with you; it’s a nice way to spend the afternoon and reading outside just has this fun feeling to it that can’t be topped.

My point in all these ideas is that sometimes your kids just need a little boost to get their imaginations going. A few easy to find (and inexpensive to obtain) items are all you need to make your summer afternoons times of adventure and exploration.

-posted by Donna Venning, whose children are setting up an outside picnic as she writes this article. Now it’s time to go enjoy the fruits of their labor….

Tags: Donna Venning, games, parenting, preschoolers, pretend play, Things to do, toddlers

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Jun
21

Games for Babies: Croquet and Chicken Ball

Posted in Games for Babies, parenting, Things to do

These ideas in the Games for Babies Series can be played with babies 9 months and up, but my children play these well into their preschool years.

Croquet

What you’ll need:
Ping pong balls
Wooden spoons

In its simplest form, you use the wooden spoons to play a “free-form” version of croquet all around the living room. With little ones, it takes a lot of hand-eye coordination just to hit the ball!

You can also sit facing your child (with legs spread to contain runaway balls), and hit the ping pong ball back and forth between you.

As your child gets older, create a little “wicket” course with blocks or books or boxes. Have fun with it!

Chicken Ball

What you’ll need:
Feather dusters
Balloons

I have to give credit for the invention of this game to my nephew, Jared. Blow up a balloon (or two), and hit the balloon with the feather duster. Sound silly? It is. But unbelievably fun.

For older ones, place a making tape line on the floor and play with the classic rule, “Don’t let the balloon touch down on your own side”.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, whose own children and their cousins launched rocket balloons over the loft balcony attempting to land them in the growup’s coffee cups this weekend at Grandma and Poppa’s beach house. (Another fun game, but not for babies!)

Tags: babies, games, Miss Analiisa, parenting, preschoolers, Things to do, toddlers

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Jun
18

Auditory Discrimination (It’s politically correct!)

Posted in Child Development, parenting, Things to do

The word “discrimination” tends to get a bad rap. It’s actually a very important skill. Especially when it comes to your sense of hearing. For instance, I don’t want to open my front door, call my children by name in to dinner, and have all the neighborhood kids appear. (Well, that might be a compliment to my culinary skills, but that’s not the point.)

Here are some fun and easy activities for you do with your child to help develop auditory discrimination:

Infants (newborn to around 18 months):
You’ll do most of the work at this age. Point out the noises around you. Sounds have to be alone, rather than layered or mixed in with others. When more than one sound occurs simultaneously, infants cannot discriminate between them, even if they are very different noises.

Say, “Listen. That is a dog barking.” Then, you imitate the dog. “Woof. Woof. A dog says, ‘woof, woof’”. Eventually, your baby will hear a dog barking and say, “Dog.”
Ask and answer your own question. “What sound does a truck make? A truck goes ‘vroom, vroom.’” One day in the future when your little one is playing with a truck, you’ll hear “vroom, vroom”, emanating from her mouth.

In this stage, your baby is learning to associate a particular sound with a particular object. Later, he’ll use this skill to match a sound to a letter symbol.

Note: When you speak in full sentences to your baby, you’ll be demonstrating vocabulary, good grammar, and correct sentence structure. What you put in her mind will, at some point, come out naturally!

Toddlers (18 months to 3 years):
As toddlers, children continue to discriminate single sounds best. You’ll still need to name new sounds, but now they will readily imitate them back to you. Toddlers are also likely to ask what an unidentified sound is.

You can ask questions like, “What is making that sound?” (a cow) “Can you moo like a cow?” “What does a _______ say?”
Toddlers can now associate sound with a process or event. “What’s that sound? … Yes, someone is knocking on the door. What does that mean?”… You are right. Grandma is here!” Also, think microwave beeping, clothes drying timer sounding, keys rattling in the lock, phone ringing.

Save the learning of letter sounds for later. And letter names have nothing to do with reading. Auditory discrimination is the best first step towards reading readiness.

Preschoolers (3 to 6 years):
At 3 and 4, preschoolers are now ready for simple layered sounds. That is, identifying a sound (like a lawnmower, and then hearing a bus drive past), and being able to recognize the sound of the bus while the lawnmower is still making noise.

Focus now on picking out sounds. Make a game of it. Let’s say you are taking a trip to the beach. What are the things that you, the grownup can hear? Birds, waves, people talking, laughing, a ferry boat… Have your child identify a sound. He picks laughing. You listen for it, too. Now you say, “Can you also hear the waves?” He has to use his filters – turn off his ears to laughing, and listen for the waves. That is auditory discrimination.
For 4 ½ and up, I love the Kindermusik CD called Ned Redd, World Traveler. Every song on the CD is from a different country, and the narrator at the beginning of each track will give you a choice of three different sounds to listen for, and how many times each sound occurs. There are three different “levels”, so younger and older kids (and their grownups!) can play together.

Here’s a track from Ned Redd so you can play this game right now.

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If you’d like to download the whole album (great for a car trip!), you can right here on play.kindermusik.com.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who developed her auditory discrimination skills by practicing band music on her euphonium in the woods at music camp right next to her violin-playing friend Gwen, while blocking out Gwen rehearsing orchestra music. I am told that it sounded rather horrible to the non-discriminating!