DAY 2 (Indoor Activities) - Dance Party!!

(As the weather turned a little cold, and my oldest stopped napping, my opportunities to share my activities has dwindled. My friend, Irene Gouge, is a home day-care provider, former elementary teacher and is a sleep coach, helping parents and children learn the tools to better napping and night-time sleeping! She's a genius and is one of my mommy role models. She's calm, thoughtful and creative! She agreed to share her expertise with you while I muddle through my busy schedule.)

By: Irene Gouge

When the temperatures drop or the weather outside is less than desirable, parents get nervous because outside time can be limited. In my experience doing a home daycare, I’ve had to work and perfect this since the key is to have stimulating activities so children are learning, growing and developing, using their bodies to get energy out so that everyone will nap well, and sleep well at night while having fun during the day! In the course of the next few days, I will share a few of my daycare tricks I do to help us get through those cold, cold days we have to spend inside. Try this one!

Dance Party

Materials needed:  scarves, towels, old ties or an old sheet cut into strips (something to have and swing around while you dance up a storm)

You can announce a Dance Party any time! We do it daily. You gotta’ get moving, and this is a fun easy to do whenever you need to activity.  Crank up your favorite music, grab your scarves and shake it up!   You can do this for 10 minutes to however long the fun lasts.  Sometimes we do two songs, take a break, and then do two more songs. There’s no one right way to do a dance party. This is a fun moving body activity for our little ones, but good for mom too and sneaks in some exercise. It’s a great way to get the sillies out!

A few other learning elements you can add to this to help with hand eye coordination, body movement and balance are:


 

• Throw the scarf up and catch it
• Twirl in circles
• Juggle the scarves
• Balance and walk with the scarf on your head
• Jump up and down
• Hop on one foot

Teach your child to follow directions with a little dance routine:

• 1Roll it up, roll it down
• 2Pump it side to side
• 3Touch your head
• 4Touch your toes
• 5Spin around and around
• 6And fall to the ground - Get up and do it again! Again! And again! 

To learn more about Irene Gouge and her "Sleep Coaching" visit loving-lessons.com.