I am SO excited about this week’s video! It’s a Word Families song for learning. I’ve been wanting to make this and share it with you for a really long time!!
This is one of those songs/videos where you can see some of my biggest childhood influences were Sesame Street – and ’80s and ’90s Hip-Hop. 🤣
Seriously though, I loved all the PBS programming I was exposed to as a little girl, but Sesame Street was my jam. It was born just one year before I was, so we’ve sorta grown up together?
Ok – not exactly. 🤪 But I’m pretty sure that my preference for making learning fun through songs – especially catchy, fun, pop songs – is because Sesame Street did it so well and I can still sing may of the songs for you today.
So I wanted to find a way to make learning to read fun and NOT STRESSFUL for kids – and a way to connect the movement to the words we were spelling, so that the learning had a connection to what we were doing.
Oh! I have so much more to day about this song – but maybe you just wanna go watch it first:
BENEFITS OF USING THIS SONG/VIDEO
BASIC SPELLING: Throughout this song/video, all the words that I spell and move to appear on the screen. If your child is not familiar with spelling or word families, this will be a gentle introduction. It’s an action and movement song, though, so if they are simply moving along and looking at the screen the spelling will just be a part of it. For those who are working on word families, connecting the words we are spelling to the movements we are doing will aid in their learning and retention!
EASE FRUSTRATIONS: One of the frustrations for both children and teachers (and parents) of young children can be around reading. Although we know that the best way for a child to learn is through play, and that their play is “work” for them, there is still an outside pressure for children to meet certain “standards” and show some sort of evidence of learning in the direction of reading and/or writing. It’s a a real conundrum. And often our desire for “results” ends up having the opposite affect on our children. The more we push learning to read, the more they won’t want to do it. So – let’s make it fun! Here you have a a dance song, it happens to be talking about letters and words that match the motions. Those things will just start to sink in, as long as the child is having fun and developing their other skills – gross motor, direction following, etc – along with it!
FUN GROSS MOTOR MOVEMENT: This doesn’t even have to be a spelling song! It’s a fun song with a chill hip-hop beat to move along to. We sway with our arms above our head, clap, tap, snap, dip, and hop – a whole bunch of fun movement that develops the big muscles in our bodies!
If you like today’s song and video, you can also get the lyrics, an mp3 of it AND a flip-book to go along with the song over at The Preschool Teachers Toolbox!
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