Unplug Your Kids: Music Stories
We’ve been following along with the Unplug Your Kids activities for quite a while, but I hadn’t made the time to post about it. This week, the theme was MUSIC.
One of the things I love to do with my kids is take a song and turn it into a full morning of imaginary play. We’ve done this with “Going on a Bear Hunt” and “Five Little Ducks” most recently, and this week we played “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”
The most important thing, JediBoy feels, is to sing the song over and over and over again, so that it gets firmly stuck in your mind and you can’t stop singing it for days! It’s actually a good way to help get BabyGirl familiar with the song. Then we just look around the house for props and inspiration, and let the morning spool out ahead of us.
For “Row, Row, Row,” we set the two kids’ wooden rockers up facing each other to make a boat that both kids could rock. Soon, JediBoy was inspired to cut an oar out of a piece of posterboard so he could act out the rowing. The kids had so much fun and kept switching sides and trading the oar. After a while, JediBoy wanted to fish, so he cut a piece of string and tied it to a plastic sword.
That inspired me to get out a magnet and some paper clips, and I made a fresh batch of fish for the classic fishing game – magnet tied to a string, paper clips taped to card stock fish. JediBoy had a blast fishing that way for a good long time, and he let BabyGirl hold on to the fish he’d caught.
Some time later, JediBoy was inspired to cook his fish! He created a campfire with cut paper logs and a playsilk flame as well as two whole sets of silverware and plates and a cooking pot from construction paper. He made a pitcher and filled it with blue playsilk water. He cut out a two-pronged paper stick and taped on two styrofoam noodles to be marshmallows!
We had a great camp-out picnic, and soon the morning was ending and we had some real sandwiches added to the living room picnic. We kept all the things we’d made out in a basket for the rest of the week, and the kids kept going back to their new favorite game.
March 3rd, 2008 at 11:29 am
What a creative little boy you have! Looks like they had a blast!
March 3rd, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I love the way that one activity flows into the next.
March 3rd, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Wow, that’s very creative.
We really like Going on a Bear Hunt too.
March 3rd, 2008 at 4:53 pm
I love the idea of using a song to create stories and play. It sounds like you had a lovely morning of fun out of one simple song! Your son is very creative, and both your little ones are adorable. Welcome to the Unplugged Project and thanks for joining in! I hope we’ll see you next week for “shiny.” I look forward to seeing what you come up with!
March 3rd, 2008 at 7:14 pm
That all looks and sounds like a great day. Wish we could come over and play with you!
March 3rd, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Oh that is wonderful how you had the activity keep going. It was a wonderful way to bring the music alive to them.
March 3rd, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Ooooh, you’ve given us some great ideas! You sound so creative. I can’t wait to read more.
March 3rd, 2008 at 9:17 pm
Thanks for stopping by my blog. I like the idea of making up games to go with songs – you just made me realize that I did this recently with my daughter too – and didn’t even realize it!
Looks like you are raising a couple of creative kiddos.
March 3rd, 2008 at 11:50 pm
Wow, now *that* is a music project! It’s the sort of thing I would have loved as a kid, though, and I hope my daughter grows up to love this kind of imaginative play, too.