Day: June 26, 2018

Many activities that we naturally do with infants and toddlers incorporate elements of performance art.  Singing songs and dancing are favorite toddler activities. Here are a few specific activities that you may be able to incorporate into your day:

• Follow the leader – Play different types of music from around the world. Encourage children to move or dance to the music. Give children turns being the leader and encourage other children to follow the child’s movements. You can play this game with an individual infant or toddler as well – copy their movements and see where the game leads.
• Recycled Material Instruments – Check out this website for ideas for instruments (Avoid materials that may be choking hazards): https://www.howweelearn.com/spectacular-homemade-musical-instruments/
• Dancing Fast and Slow – Play music with different tempos. Encourage children to move their bodies to match the music.
• Music painting- Provide fingerpaint or paint and brushes. Play music of different tempos and encourage children to move their fingers or brushes in time with the music.
• Art Stories – Encourage children to tell you stories about the pictures they create. Write down the stories and attach them to the piece of art.
• Story Prompts – Show children interesting pictures, either drawings, painting, or actual pictures. Ask the children, “What’s happening in this picture?”
• Puppet play – Provide a variety of finger and simple hand puppets for children. Model for children how to act out songs and nursery rhymes using the finger puppets.
• Expand fingerplays- In addition to introducing fingerplays, encourage children to act out fingerplays using their whole bodies, rather than just their fingers.

Check out more ideas on our Pinterest page here!

For the Main Article on Performing Arts in ECE, CLICK HERE.

For Preschool Activity Ideas, CLICK HERE.

For School-Age Activity Ideas, CLICK HERE.

For Director’s Corner Activity Ideas, CLICK HERE.

As the leader of a team, what you value can trickle down to the rest of your team. Make a commitment to increasing the learning opportunities provided by your program. Help teachers and families understand and buy into this commitment as well.  Here are a few ways you can do this:

• Share the benefits of performing arts with families on a regular basis. Comb through your state’s early learning standards and pinpoint the specific skills that performing arts activities help to develop.
• Send home performing arts activity ideas. Encourage families to share pictures of themselves engaged in the activity. Ask family members and children to identify what skills they used during the activity.  Post the pictures and lists of skills in a central location for others to appreciate.
• Share information about community theaters, and performing art center productions in your newsletters.
• Contact local performing art centers and inquire about their calendar of events, field trip opportunities, and discounted prices for matinee shows.  Ask if the theater offers large group discounted pricing, and if so, organize a family event for a kid-friendly performance.
• Reach out to performing arts organizations to explore possible collaborations. Many programs have community education programs that you may be able to bring into your program.
• Incorporate some drama games into your teambuilding events or staff meetings. Be sure to make connections between the skills your employees used, the skills they want their children to learn, and how they can adapt these games for their classrooms.
• Be sure to set aside a portion of the supply budget for materials needed for performing arts.
• Check lesson plans for performing arts activities. Coach teachers who may need to stretch their thinking to include more engaging or intentional performing arts activities.

Does your program have an excellent performing arts program?  Share what you have done on our Facebook page here!

For the Main Article on Performing Arts in ECE, CLICK HERE.

For Infant and Toddler Activity Ideas, CLICK HERE.

For Preschool Activity Ideas, CLICK HERE.

For School-Age Activity Ideas, CLICK HERE.

Performing arts are usually included in early learning environments.  Perhaps you are looking for some new ideas to expand on what you are currently doing.   Some of these suggestions would be better for small groups and others would work for large group activities.

• Fabric dancing – Introduce a variety of different fabrics to dance time. Encourage children to use fabrics in different ways and to compare and contrast how the fabrics behave when moved to the music.
• Adapt popular games – Vary the rules to favorite games to make them more challenging. For example, when playing freeze dance, rather than the children freezing when the music stops, then can freeze when they hear drums playing in the song.  Involve the children in changing up the rules.
• Role plays – use role-playing to help children create solutions to common preschool challenges such as sharing materials, making friends, and being cooperative. Ask two children to pretend to have a challenging interaction.  Ask them to freeze at the point of conflict, then ask the other children to come up with possible solutions.
• Act out favorite stories – Introduce a variety of materials that promote acting out familiar stories. Include puppets, felt pieces, dolls, laminated cut-outs of characters, story stones, etc.
• Emotions Dice – Create a die that contains different emotions on each face. Have children roll the die, then act out the emotion that they roll.  You can add different scenarios and more complex emotions as children develop their skills.  For example, you could add another die with the names of animals on them, which may result in a child acting out an excited elephant or a sad snake.
• Storytelling and Playacting – Encourage children to make up their own stories and then act them out with a cast of their peers or with puppets. You could use interesting pictures, famous paintings, or random photographs as story prompts.
• Sound walls – Create a sound wall with recycles pots and pans on the playground. Provide a variety of drumsticks and types of metal for children to explore.
• Theme or project related drama – Be sure to change up the materials in the dramatic play area to reflect the theme or project that you are exploring with the children. Change the dramatic play area into an airport, animal hospital, or farm.
• Outdoor theater – Establish a space on your playground for a stage. Provide costumes and props that children can use outside to engage in dramatic play.
• Art stories – Capture the stories behind children’s artwork. encourage children to act out these stories with their peers. An excellent resource that shows how this can be done in early learning environments is Vivian Gussin Paley’s book, The Boy Who Would be a Helicopter.

Check out more ideas on our Pinterest page here!

For the Main Article on Performing Arts in ECE, CLICK HERE.

For Infant and Toddler Activity Ideas, CLICK HERE.

For School-Age Activity Ideas, CLICK HERE.

For Director’s Corner Activity Ideas, CLICK HERE.

Many school age programs are short on time to produce large scale productions, but summer months provide the opportunity to explore performing arts more intensely.  Offer some of these activities to help fill those long summer days:

• Play Drama Games – This website included many ideas for drama games that may be appropriate for children in your care: http://www.bbbpress.com/dramagames/
• Put on a play – Adapt a favorite story or write your own play with the children. Take steps to put on the production for the other children in the program, including creating the sets and costumes.  This could be adapted to be a puppet show as well.
• World Music – Explore instruments and music from around the world. Ask families to share instruments or music from their culture or region of the world.  Encourage children to compare and contrast different music focusing on the sound of the music and the way the music makes them feel.
• Perform a concert – Introduce songs from around the world to the children. Ask children to teach the other children their favorite songs from their childhood.  Include songs that are sung in different languages.  Put on a concert for the other children in the program.
• Interpretive Dance – Encourage children to listen carefully to a piece of music and determine the mood of the piece. Ask them to create a dance that matches the mood of the piece of music.  Introduce children to different types of music and dance throughout the year.
• Mime – Introduce the children to mime and encourage them to create an act for other children. You could introduce this as a game of charades where the children have to guess what the performer is doing or it could be a comedic act.
• Improvisational theater – The basic concept behind improv is “yes, and,” meaning that performers create an idea, they all agree to act out that idea, and build upon it. Each new idea is agreed to, adapted to, and built upon to create an entertaining performance.
• Cheers, chants, and raps- Encourage the children to create their own lyrics. If they want, they can also create the music and dance moves to accompany their cheer, chant, or rap.

Check out more ideas on our Pinterest page here!

For the Main Article on Performing Arts in ECE, CLICK HERE.

For Infant and Toddler Activity Ideas, CLICK HERE.

For Preschool Activity Ideas, CLICK HERE.

For Director’s Corner Activity Ideas, CLICK HERE.

I started my career in early childhood education by helping a friend and I just fell in love with it.  My favorite time of the day to spend with my children is circle time and free play.  Watching the children’s growth, the milestones, and my love and passion for the children motivates me to work with children.  I love my job because EVERY DAY is different and EVERY CHILD is DIFFERENT.  I also love seeing their little minds just absorb everything.  I live in Portland, Oregon.  In my free time, I take online classes, read, travel, and go shopping.

I see myself in the near future owning and operating my own child care center.  I have plans on obtaining my Associates Degree in Early Childhood Education and I plan to continue taking classes with CCEI.  I also have plans to receive my CDA credential.  I would recommend CCEI to EVERYONE.  Anybody who is going to further their education should most definitely enroll with CCEI.  I LOVE CCEI!

The Partnership for 21^st Century Learning has identified the skills that young children and students in school need to develop in order to be successful within the 21^st century workforce.  Here is the list of 21^st Century Skills from category of Creativity and Innovation:

• Use a wide range of idea creation techniques
• Create new and worthwhile ideas
• Elaborate, refine, analyze and evaluate their own ideas in order to improve and maximize creative efforts
• Develop, implement and communicate new ideas to others effectively
• Be open and responsive to new and diverse perspectives; incorporate group input and feedback into the work
• Demonstrate originality and inventiveness in work and understand the real world limits to adopting new ideas
• View failure as an opportunity to learn; understand that creativity and innovation is a long-term, cyclical process of small successes and frequent mistakes
• Act on creative ideas to make a tangible and useful contribution to the field in which the innovation will occur

You can access the entire list here:  http://www.p21.org/our-work/p21-framework

One way that early childhood educators can lay the foundation for these important skills is to intentionally incorporate performing arts into the curriculum on a regular basis.   Performing arts typically refers to activities that involve dance,  music, and drama/storytelling.   These activities provide dynamic learning experiences that are naturally motivating and engaging for young children.

There are many benefits associated with performing arts activities.  Here are just a few:

• Engage creativity, excitement, and engagement
• Promote communication skills
• Strengthen physical development and coordination
• Require cooperation, collaboration, and problem solving
• Can improve attention and self-regulation
• Allow children to explore different feelings and situations, which can promote empathy
• Build confidence and a sense of accomplishment
• Children have a chance to practice their audience skills

Check out the lists below for specific activity ideas you can incorporate into your curriculum for children of different ages.

For Infant and Toddler Activity Ideas, CLICK HERE.

For Preschool Activity Ideas, CLICK HERE.

For School-Age Activity Ideas, CLICK HERE.

For Director’s Corner Activity Ideas, CLICK HERE.