Let’s Move!
This pathway provides a great opportunity to use the app together, moving and dancing as you sing along to familiar songs. Help your little one learn the parts of the body, while you move and sing.
Curriculum Background
The third Pathway explores the last ‘prime’ area of the Early Years Curriculum – Physical Development.
The NHS recommends that your toddler or young child is physically active for at least 3 hours a day.
This area of learning covers ‘fine’ and ‘gross’ motor skills: the small movements your child learns to do with their hands, linked to eye/hand coordination, and the big movements your child learns to do with their body, building muscles and supporting healthy bone growth. In their first five years, your child grows at an incredible rate. Your child’s brain and body are constantly developing, as they interact with you, explore their world and build their strength, coordination and dexterity.
The learning in this Pathway supports your child to get physically active, including lots of songs, stories and activities where you can move along together. This Pathway offers the ideal opportunity to share the app with your child – moving and dancing as you listen to the interactive books.
What’s in the Pathway?
- There are six books to read, listen to and talk about:
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- The Pathway begins with an old favourite – “Run, Run” – based on the story of “The Gingerbread Man”.
- Next, is an interactive version of the song and dance “The Hokey Pokey” (also known as the ‘Hokey Cokey’). Join in with your child, singing and dancing together to help them learn the names of different body parts.
- The third book, “Moving our Body” includes a set of physical activities, based on the well-known nursery songs “Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” and “If You’re Happy and You Know It”. Your child may be familiar with these songs from nursery or other childcare settings, so get active and join in together with the movements.
- In the fourth story, “The Woollies Follow the Footprints”, we follow along with the Woollies on their adventure. For some physical fun, try making footprints outdoors in the mud with your child.
- The final two books in this Pathway offer some great chances to join in with the characters in the stories. In “We’re in the Wrong Book!”, jump along with the characters as they hop from book to book and solve a maze.
- In “Peace of Advice Yoga Book”, end the Pathway on a calm note, trying out the yoga moves and positions with your child. Remember, both high impact physical activity and calming stretches are important, to help your child build strength and suppleness.
- The stories and songs in this Pathway are interspersed with learning activities to support your child to build fine motor skills. (The small hand and finger movements that your child needs to learn, in order to learn to write.) Your child will trace patterns with a finger and trace paths through obstacles and mazes: ideal for building the eye-to-hand coordination needed to form letter and number shapes.
- There are also interactive art, spelling and dancing activities to keep both hands and bodies busy. This Pathway offers an ideal opportunity to learn, get active and play, along with your child!
Books from the app
You can buy some of the amazing picture books from the app below, so you can read them offline too. Or, explore some new titles together with our books to encourage physical interaction and development!
We’re in the Wrong Book!
Richard Byrne
Ben and Bella love the pages of their book. So, when jumping from page to page, they suddenly find themselves in the wrong book altogether, they are most perplexed. For Ben, Bella, and readers, what follows is a rollercoaster journey through a counting book, a comic book, a history book, a puzzle book, an ebook, a craft book, a sticker book, a spot-the-difference book, and finally a scary book – which ultimately propels them back into their own book! Phew!
The Woollies: Follow the Footprints
Kelly McCain and Jon Stuart
With their balls of wool and chunky needles, the Woollies are always ready to . . . imagi-knit! Puzzle, Bling, Zip and Baby Woolly live in a slightly overgrown corner of the local park. Their superpower is knitting anything from their imagination into reality.
When Baby Woolly sees some unfamiliar footprints on the path, he decides to follow them with Zip. It’s just the start of a really big adventure full of imagination and awesome contraptions.
Activities for you to do at home
- Art and craft activities are great for developing fine motor skills, so do as much drawing, painting, cutting and sticking with your child as possible. Any activities using a pincer movement with the fingers, such as picking up beads to stick onto a picture or to thread to make a bracelet, will help your child get ready to write using a tripod grip.
Important: make sure you closely supervise any toys that might be a choking hazard and do not use small craft items at all with the under twos.
- Create an obstacle course outdoors with your child, to build gross motor skills. Include obstacles where your child needs to balance – for instance walking across a plank supported by two crates. Incorporate activities that help build your child’s strength, such as lifting a bucket full of water, or pulling a heavy object with a rope.
- Encourage your child to get involved in planting and growing. Time spent outdoors is crucial for health and development. ‘Growing your own’ is also excellent to encourage good eating habits and an understanding of early scientific concepts. Grow flowers, fruit or vegetables in a garden, if you have one, or in containers, if you don’t. Help child learn to handle small seeds, water them carefully, dig holes for planting, and watch their flowers and produce grow!