Need some ideas for creative movement activities for preschoolers? If you have a little one under 5 years old at home, then you’ve experienced what it’s like to try to match up with an energetic toddler or preschooler present at your home. 

Children between 1-4 years old don’t only need a lot of movement; they also need many varieties in motion. So while it’s essential to make time for unstructured, active playtime, it’s also necessary to help them have plenty of fun with simple activities that you know will help them get involved and develop skills in various ways.

Infant Care San Diego brings you a list of 5 fun activities for kids. It is the ultimate go-to for any playdate, home child care setting, or a morning or afternoon with a caregiver. Whatever the situation, short attention spans mean that it’s a good idea to have a few of these up your sleeve.

What are Movement Activities?

Movement activities, also called gross motor activities, are games, actions, or activities that engage the body’s massive muscles, thereby building gross motor coordination.

Movement may be wild for a toddler, and as long as he has enough freedom to play and be, he will hunt down regular exercise through his play activities.

While free play is important, there are many sorts of movement and gross motor activities you’ll initiate together with your child, which will get the massive muscles working together.

You may want to undertake a game or activity if you tell your child needs an opportunity from intense activity, if your child has not had much outdoor play, if you’d wish to help your child build some skills, or to possess some fun, bonding time.

Through movement activities, you’ll work on skills like turn-taking, cooperation, vocabulary development, social skills, or gross motor skills like strength, balance, hand-eye coordination, agility, speed, etc.

What are the advantages of Movement Activities in Early Childhood?

During infancy, regular physical activity is crucial for children’s development. Without movement, children wouldn’t grow properly and would have severe developmental delays.

Children’s brains grow and develop through learning, and therefore the primary method through which children learn is by moving and exploring their world.

We see this in babies who spend hours a day travelling, exploring everything and anything.

This remains the case throughout the preschool years as children need plenty of movement to grow still.

So let’s check in some music and movement activities for preschoolers.

Rolling Around

Pretend to be logs of wood and, with arms stretched overhead, come around the grass. Then move hands to the edges and come around.

Rolling is sweet for coordinating the ear, neck, shoulder, hip muscles and building strength.

If you’ve got a sloped garden or can find a grassy bank at a park, rolling downhill is a large amount of fun and an excellent movement activity.

You can also lay a blanket on the grass, hold one end, then ask your child to lie on the opposite end and roll himself into the mat, then out again.

Who Am I?

This activity promotes fantasy play and thinking skills, alongside building gross motor skills.

Choose different animals and pretend to manoeuvre like them—alternate guessing what animal the opposite person is.

Try suggesting different categories to form it more challenging, like animals that jump, fly or run.

Here are some creatures to undertake imitate:

1. Tortoise
2. Crab
3. Elephant
4. Seal
5. Snake
6. Butterfly
7. Rabbit

Obstacle Course

Set up your obstacle course within the garden and obtain those large muscles working.

With a touch of imagination, you’ll find a course out of waste materials or things found around the house and garden. Change them regularly to make the challenge more interesting.

Here are some ideas for your obstacle course:

Old tires to leap into or climb over

Boxes to climb into or use as tunnels to crawl through

Planks of wood as balance beams

Tree stumps

Plastic cones (or bottles crammed with sand) to weave through

A ladder laid down on the bottom (to hop into)

Freeze

In this tag, as you catch and tag someone, they need to freeze until somebody else touches them and is unfrozen.

This is best played with the entire family or class.

Chasing games teach children to manoeuvre their bodies in space effectively (not bumping into people and objects as they move) and improve their speed and response time.

Simon Says

Simon Says maybe a fun game of following instructions that are usually movement-based.

One person is nominated to be Simon and must give instructions that the players must follow. However, they need only to perform the instructions that begin with “Simon says…” and not follow instructions that don’t start with the words “Simon Says”.

Although this game primarily develops listening and spotlight skills, it’s an excellent opportunity to create gross motor skills. In Pre K San Diego, these are the most prominent movement games that are played.