Developmental Notes: Wiggles & Giggles Week 1

Steady Beat: The most fundamental property of music is beat, an underlying, unchanging, repeating pulse. Feeling and moving to stead beat develops s sense of time and the ability to organize and coordinate movements within time.

The awareness of beat occurs while greeting everyone with a steady beat motion and singing Our Time Hello, swaying to a steady beat while listening to My Bonnie, pendulum rocking from side to side while singing Lukey’s Boat, playing the rhythm sticks to the recording of French Folk Tune, and rubbing hands back and forth while chanting Wishy Washy Wee!

Fine Motor Movement: During the first part of life, gross motor activities dominate the child’s repertoire of movement with the major objective being the mastery of walking. Now the child can focus on activities that encourage the development of fine muscles. Fine motor movements allow the child to increase skills that require finger and hand movements such as putting together a simple puzzle, painting with a paintbrush, turning a page of a book, or stringing beads.

Active Listening: Active listening is a process that goes beyond the physical act of hearing. It is an intellectual and emotional process that integrates a full range of inputs in a search for the meaning of and an understanding of a sender’s message. It involves listening between the lines to hear what is not said as well as what is said. Active listening involves interaction and participation in the cycles of communication.

Literacy: The participating in joint picture book reading helps young children to internalize some basic skills and concepts important for true literacy:
• Builds on familiarity and enjoyment
• Provides repetition and predictability
• Expands vocabulary and knowledge of story structures
• Promotes critical thinking and problem solving
• Fosters creative expression and language play.
These same skills required for good reading also build musical language literacy. Language and musical language skills are more fully developed when woven together.

Wiggles & Giggles At Home: Water play is both fun and cognitively challenging! On page 16-17 in the Home Activity Book, water play activities such as Washing Up! And Painting With Water encourage discovery of the physical properties of water. Through these activities, concepts such as full and empty, heavy and light, wet and dry, floating and sinking can be experienced and explored.

Children can better understand the meaning of a word when given the opportunity to experience the word through a variety of sensory activities. Words such as sea, whale, boat, swimming, float used in the song Above the Sea may be new concepts to some of the children. The following activities can enhance the child’s understanding:

• Show pictures of sea, fish, whales, and boats
• Encourage movements of swimming like a whale, swimming like a little fish, swimming like a child.
• Float a boat or plastic container on the water, then watch a heavy object sink.
• Smell fish and salty water.

Folk Song: Ring Around the Rosey has survived for hundreds of years. Although this song had its beginnings in tragedy, the days of The Great Plague in England, it has evolved into a standard childhood favourite with new meaning and purpose. Through child’s play, the pleasure and joy of this song has overcome its past. This is only one of the many examples of how the original concept and meaning of a folk song can be altered as it is passed on from one generation to another.