Finger Plays
Finger plays are excellent activities for toddlers and preschoolers. My baby girl is sixteen months old as I am writing this article and she loves to do the Itsy Bitsy Spider. She makes the spider climb up the spout, she washes it out and she LOVES to hold the sun up. It is an easy and effective way to teach your children popular poems like The Itsy Bitsy Spider, Little Bunny Foo Foo, and The Wheels on the Bus!!!
They are not only fun, they also are great at helping young children with memory, coordination, learning new vocabulary words, and language development. They are also great to include in lessons about rhyming and poetry. Each storyteller or instructor has their own expressions and finger movements to match their songs. In many cases, even the poems or nursery rhymes vary. With my little girl, I use simple finger plays that mostly include some facial expressions and a lot of hand movement but with my son, who is four, we do more advanced plays that may involve movements of many parts of the body.
Some other Popular Ones are:- This Little Piggy
- Five Little Monkeys
- One Potato, Two Potato
- Buckle My Shoer
There are many other excellent examples of plays on YouTube and http://www.songsforteaching.com/fingerplays/index.htm is one of my favorite sites for others. Other great sites are:
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