This weekend is a long weekend in Canada , while next weekend is in the US. Did you know that even car rides can be an opportunity to promote readiness for kindergarten? Whether your trip is long or short, you may find some time to sing a few songs together. Since the focus for the blog has been water play and learning, here are a few suggestions about water: Iensy Weensy Spider, 5 Little Speckled Frogs, and Slippery Fish. Row, Row, Row Your Boat doesn’t need to stop with just a boat; there’s other ways to travel.
Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.
……….Drive, drive drive your can gently down the street.
……….Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a treat.
Fly, fly, fly your plane gently in the sky.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life’s too fun to cry.
……….Ride, ride, ride your bike gently down the route.
……….Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a hoot.
What other verses can you add? Singing songs helps children with memory, listening, rhythm, vocabulary, and more. The up and down of the notes and spaces between them is a similar system to math–increasing and decreasing numbers–so singing sets up brain pathways for later math learning, too. These are only a few of the kindergarten readiness skills developed with singing. What songs do your little ones like to sing? Can you add any other water songs?
Hands sure do come in handy. For page 4 of your child’s All About Me book, have your child put one hand on a paper and help trace around it. (see the blogs just before this for pages 1-3) Together, talk about the hand, noticing all the lines and other features. Put your hands together and notice the difference in sizes. What things are the same about both hands? What things are different? Hands are very useful for doing all kinds of things. Notice the ways the two (or more) of you are using hands. What else can hands do?