What to Do During Your Preschool Music and Movement

Music and movement is a fun and engaging way to get your preschoolers moving with intention! While it is great fun, it is also very beneficial to children’s development. Through music and movement your preschoolers will develop a larger vocabulary, strengthen social-emotional skills, build fine and gross motor skills, improve working memory, and boost math skills!

LET THEM BE CREATIVE

It is best to keep things open ended for preschoolers, especially when introducing something new like musical instruments. This allows the children to explore music, movement, and making sounds while learning through play. Your preschoolers will be better able to focus during more advanced activities after they have had time to interact with the materials freely.

GIVE THEM INSTRUMENTS

It doesn’t matter if they have never so much as picked an instrument up before, anyone can tap a drum or shake a maraca. Children can start to develop a sense of beat and rhythm at a very early age when exposed to music and allowed the opportunity to play with rhythm instruments. Playing instruments in preschool also helps develop fine and gross motor skills, improves memory, and builds confidence.

There are a lot of fun ways to use instruments with your preschoolers. Copy cat games are a great way to practice listening and rhythm skills. You can create patterns and have them repeat them back to you. Preschoolers love playing games like Simon Says with shakers, too. Preschoolers also love just following the beat of a song with shakers as they dance!

PLAY MOVEMENT GAMES

Movement games are so much fun in preschool because you can have the entire class playing together! It is a fun and functional activity that helps build gross motor skills and social-emotional skills at the same time, too.

Playing parachute games with music is especially fun. You can play games like “Popcorn” to the beat of the music. With your preschoolers standing holding onto the parachute, put balls in the middle. Then, turn on the music and have the children shake the parachute and move it up and down to the rhythm of the music. You can even play a song with changing tempos. The balls will look like popping popcorn as they bounce around on the parachute!

DANCE

Let them dance! Preschoolers cannot resist dancing when they hear their favorite songs. Give them some colored scarves to dance with and they can dance to the tempo of the music. Make sure to change it up a bit every once in a while. You could even ask them to act out what they think the music sounds like or what it makes them think of. Don’t forget to dance with them, too!

What you do during your preschool music and movement time should be all about having fun with your preschoolers. The rest will come naturally.