Encourage movement with your infant
What You Need:
Nothing
What To Do:
- Lay your infant on his back on a soft surface such as a changing table, carpeted floor, or a comfortable blanket.
- Take hold of his feet in your hands.
- Start moving his feet back and forth, slowly at first and then faster.
- Recite the following rhyme as you move his feet:
Motorboat, motorboat, go so slow (while moving his legs slowly)
Motorboat, motorboat go so fast (move his legs a little faster)
Motorboat, motorboat step on the gas! (move his legs even faster)
- Watch to see if your infant starts to move his legs with you or push against you.
- Do it over again as long as he seems to enjoy it.
Make delicious pretzels in the shapes of different letters.
What You Need:
• 1-1/3 cups white or wheat flour
• 1 tablespoon yeast
• ½ cup warm water
• 1 teaspoon honey
• ½ teaspoon table salt
• 1 egg, beaten
• Coarse salt or Hawaiian salt for sprinkling (optional)
• Mixing bowl and spoon
• Measuring cups and measuring spoons
• Pastry or basting brush
• Waxed paper (optional)
• Mustard (optional)
What To Do:
1. Show your child how to use the different measuring tools.
2. As you measure each ingredient with him, talk about quantities, measurements, and following instructions, step by step.
3. First, dissolve the yeast in warm water in a mixing bowl.
4. Add the honey and table salt.
5. Add the flour and mix well, forming the dough into a ball.
6. Place dough onto a floured surface and knead for five minutes.
7. Break off small pieces of dough and place them on waxed paper. Help your child to roll the dough into strips and shape them into the letters in his name.
8. Place the letters on a cookie sheet and let them rise for 40-60 minutes.
9. About 10 minutes before you’re ready to bake the pretzels, preheat oven to 425 degrees. (Keep your child safely away from the oven.)
10. Brush the pretzels with beaten egg and sprinkle them with coarse salt, if desired.
11. Bake pretzels for 10 minutes.
12. Remove pretzels from the oven and let them cool. Be sure that all hot items are out of your child’s reach.
13. Point to and sound out the letters to your child’s name together.
14. Try to form other words using the letters of his name or identify other words that start with each of the letters.
15. Enjoy eating your pretzels and talk about how they taste. (Dip the pretzels in mustard to experience a different taste.)
! Safety Alert: Make it clear to your child that only grown-ups may use an oven. Let him know that he should not touch the oven because he may get burned.
Encourage movement by pretending to be an animal
What You Need:
- Book about mother animals and their babies
What To Do:
- Look through the book with your child.
- Point out an animal that walks on all four legs.
- Get down on all fours and playfully pretend to be a mama or papa animal with her baby.
- Ask your child to crawl and follow you around on all fours.
- Explain the habits of each animal and act out their life styles. For example, climb over cushions as if climbing hills or mountains; crawl under tables and chairs like animals burrowing in the ground.
Simple clean up activity that encourages physical activity
What You Need:
What To Do:
- When it’s time to clean up, say, “Vroom! Vroom! It’s time to become a vacuum cleaner and clean up!”
- As you clean up together, encourage your child to bend, reach and grab in all kinds of directions: forward, backward, above, below, around, and through, as well as, directions that cross the midline.
Adapted from Sesame Street: We Have the Moves!
