Imagine That - SWIS Lesson Plan 4

Children of Imagine That age enjoy and thrive on pretend play. " Play is the most important thing in a child's life," says Karen Miller, consultant to the Kindermusik International Creative Team and author of Ages and Stages and The Outside Play and Learning Book. Early childhood researchers and theorist agree that play is significant in the development of children physically, socially, emotionally and cognitively.

In today's lesson there are several activities that involve pretend play, such as My Tree House and In My Pocket. We will also be introducing our first book Can You Find Me? which is a riddle book which contains verbal and visual cues. Finding an answer through a series of questions and clues encourages thinkings skills needed for problem solving.

We will also be doing a humming activity. Humming has two specific benefits. Humming over a period of time increases the strength of the acoustic spectrum, which affects the quality of the singing voice. Also, an extended period of time of humming increases the carrying power of the voice, resulting in more volume with less effort.

We will also be listening to Tricky Trails where the children will be introduce to the music that has three movement pathways - zig zag, curved and circle. Movement activities that involve pathways help children develop skills used in writing and copying and even map reading!! ( maybe the dads and mums can do with a bit of help in the map reading area too, hehe!)

Lastly, I would like to include this quote by Sue Bredekamp and Carol Copple in Developmentally Approriate Practice in Early Childhood Programs : Among the key tasts of early childhood educators is supporting children's developing sense of self.....It is an environment of encouragement and genuine respect that children are able to develop confidence and competence, not by being told how worderful or special they are but by being given chances to take initiative, experience success in perfroming difficult tasks and figure things out for themselves.