Here are interesting examples of how teachers, caregivers and children have engaged with our content across different domains of development and made it their own.
Physical Development
Physical development is crucial in the early years. While unstructured play naturally encourages children to be active, can structured settings also make physical development activities enjoyable for young children?
Our story "With Yoga I Can Be Anything" combines yoga asanas with a child’s imagination, helping children learn critical gross motor skills through pretend play. This story has gained popularity at preschools, play gyms, after-school centers, and homes, where children enjoy transforming into a butterfly, a tree, or a mountain as they follow along with our narrative.
Here are examples of preschoolers re-enacting our story during an annual day and a child adding her own unique touch to the Hindi version of this story.
Sensory Development
Connecting with their five senses helps preschoolers build awareness about their own bodies and the objects around them. The topic can become enjoyable only through experiential exploration rather than theoretical learning.
The Senses Song and Squishy Atta offer ample opportunities for designing activities that prompt children to interact with real world objects in the Indian context. Such activities, involving exploration of various textures, scents, and sounds, enhance their sensory abilities in an exciting way.
Here's a young child singing along to our Senses song, connecting each sense with its intended purpose through the use of actions and home-made props.
Here's another instance of a young child exploring textures using our song Squishy Atta. His mother arranged all the items mentioned in the song in separate bowls, allowing the child to explore the texture of each item and describe them as squishy atta, sticky honey, grainy sugar, and more independently.
Health and Hygiene
Preschoolers are often susceptible to coughs, colds, and viral infections, which can be quite challenging for both the child and caregivers to manage. Teaching personal hygiene skills early on can empower children to take control of their overall health as they grow. However, the way we convey these concepts to children differs greatly from how we approach adults.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an abundance of information about personal hygiene across various platforms. The messages and tone of these communications were primarily aimed at instilling a sense of fear and caution among adults regarding hygiene practices.
However, to get through to young children, we created a no-panic, child safety song called ‘Corona se Darona’ that taught the same skills but in a playful way.
Here’s how a parent and child choreographed an entire dance sequence to our song and showcased it in their online preschool during the lockdown to spread awareness among her classmates.
Speech Skills
If you're looking for a break from phonics or traditional instructional methods to teach language and speech, consider using tongue twisters. They not only present a fun challenge but also motivate children to practice speaking without being afraid to make mistakes. Our adaptation of popular Indian tongue twisters aids children in mastering difficult sounds and word combinations through enjoyable repetition.
Social Skills
In the early years, children are gradually moving from solitary play to engaging with a group. This transition could be daunting for some. Action songs and call-and-response activities during circle time help children learn to engage with others. These activities encourage cooperation, turn-taking, and group participation, essential for developing social skills.
Pre-Writing Skills
Pre-writing skills are like warm up activities to gradually prepare a preschooler to write. If you skip this step, a child's fingers will feel unsteady, they will not be able to grip a writing tool for too long, their writing will not be clear and most of all, they will feel very frustrated. Writing will feel like a chore and not as a means to express themselves.
Here are some play- based activities to strengthen fine motor skills to prepare a child to write:
Get them to trace: Finger tracing is the easiest and most effective way to prepare them for writing.
Tweezers: With the help of tweezers ask your little one to pick up objects. This develops finger strength to grip objects.
Create Art: Sounds easy right? Folding paper, finger painting, doodling with crayons and sticking activities are great to support finger strength. It helps in increasing several sensory skills for your little one.
Cut with Child safety Scissors: Use child safety scissors and help your child to cut out the outlines of some shapes. You can also ask them to paste these shapes and create some fun crafts.
Stick and Paste: Draw the outline of a letter and put some glue all over it. Ask your child to pick up lentils and stick them all around to form the letter.
Here are samples of pre-writing activities from our Phonics worksheet kits.
