This is an area very close to my heart, especially given our situation: Alex often has to ride in my lap in the wheelchair when we go places, and whilst this has had some fantastic benefits ( never riding in a stroller, but with mom holding her, talking, pointing, sharing right at her level), it also has had some definite drawbacks as far as encouraging physical activity!
Because of this, and the fact that our EL toddlers have just as much, if not more, energy to burn that every other active child, I really try to invent activities that encourage activity!
Many of you have seen the 'playground/climbing wall/ activity course we have built in the garage, so we do a lot of EL activities taking advantage of this area! And definitely, just about anything can be done on the mini-trampoline and trapeze bar! (Definitely recommend purchasing the better quality trampolines with a support bar for toddlers! It also will become an activity of its own to hang on:)) some of our climbing holds have letters on them- she tries to think of words that begin with that letter whilst climbing or traversing. We have even been working on alphabetizing by placing small objects beginning with each letter on top of some of the holds-she tries to traverse around knocking them to the floor in alphabetical order…
Our backyard/ garden area is also a staple for EL-inspired races, scavenger hunts, hopscotch variations involving anything from new vocab to math to country-hopping, the choices are endless)
Lets see…a few of the indoor favorites!
I bought ten cardboard boxes and assembled them- they are all the same shape and size, about 20 cm^3…we originally purchased these for math, a fun variation of blocks when we were learning our ‘ten facts.’ I would show her an equation at one end of the room, and she would run as fast as she could to bring back the boxes one-at-a-time to build the equation, number bond, etc…it is very physical and visual, and she actually figured out her first arithmetic sequence within the first day!
These have proven a fantastic investment as we have used them for so many things! I cut a small slot in one side for sorting. I just put pot-its on the side of the boxes at one end of the room, a huge pile of things to be sorted at the other end. We then set ‘Mr. Dinger’, a kitchen timer friend I have provided with shoes, a Bowtie, googly eyes and a hat lol ), and she races to sort as many things as possible in the time allotted:
Some favorites:
Sorting a huge pile of Schleich plastic animal replicas by phyla
Sorting enormous stacks of old word cards into parts of speech
Matching name cards to objects in random EL, even artists to famous paintings
Polygons by numbers of sides
(You could definitely do this without boxes as we have in the past, even sorting a big pile of toys by the letter their name starts with)
We have a very long number line down the length of the hallway for our version of JUMP math:)
tWISTER!!! This game can be written on with dry erase crayons, sight words a, numbers, parts of speech, anything you can come up with–and don’t limit it to typical twister- jumping, hopping, stretching. We also have a hooked-on-phonics mat a friend gave us, easily made. It has all the letters of the alphabet, and we toss beanbags to it- whatever letter it lands on inspires a word beginning with that letter, etc…
There are several kids Yoga videos we have that involve letters and animal poses from A-Z and more.
We use ASL to fingerspell words, usually whilst she is running about.
Ooh, a favorite! Earthball! We have a blow-up globe-style ball that we use daily. Put on some music or not and toss it back and forth. We started with continents and oceans, now even run through the alphabet naming a city or a country beginning with that letter…again, countless possibilities.
A JumpRope, even starting with a rope with one end tied to a chair and mom gently sways it back and forth so kiddo can practice jumping and timing, especially whilst learning.
Charades reading and puppet shows: read a book, or a page, and then have them act it out-definitely fun and reinforces comprehension. We have built a ‘theater’ for her and her productions.
Anyhow, we have countless games and bits like this. I realize they are not ALL precisely literacy activities, but it might give you ideas for variations in literacy games and such-we use many variations of each for different subjects…tomorrow I will ask her what her favorite ‘moving’ games are! She will probably say ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’ as we have been teaching such songs in different languages and singing them as fast as possible as she does the actions 