If you’re anything like me, you’re starting to feel the winter months settling in. The cold is here and the kids are getting restless. You’re getting a bit tired of baking cookies, building forts and sweeping up remnants of the thousandth paper snowflake that your scissors and paper-loving child cut this week. So today, we’re pleased to bring you some help from two lovely ladies: Kerry Aradhya, author of the fabulous blog Picture Books & Pirouettes and Maria Hanley, a dance educator in New York City. We hope you enjoy their tips on making storytimes full of music, movement and laughter!

Movement clearly has physical benefits, but did you know that it also helps children develop literacy skills? Just like picture books, movement can tell stories. It can help children communicate their thoughts and feelings, even if they can’t yet articulate them with words. And, like picture books, movement can give children a safe place to imagine, explore and create.

Kerry and Maria frequently collaborate on how to use picture books in creative movement classes for young children. We asked them to share some of their ideas for using books to inspire movement at home, too. Here’s what they had to say:

• Look for books with simple story lines that can be translated into movement. During the winter months, find a book about a child’s adventures in the snow, and then act out scenes from the book. The more action words in the book, the better! Rolling pretend snowballs, building pretend snowmen, and making snow angels on the floor are activities all children can enjoy, even if they don’t live in a cold climate.

• Use concept books, which generally focus on one idea and don’t necessarily tell a story, to reinforce educational topics through movement. Books about letters, shapes, and numbers are good choices. Children can use their bodies to form the letters or shapes, and they can practice counting by performing a movement once, twice, three times, and more.

• Choose a book that has an accompanying CD, or find other music that is related to the book you’re reading. Practice your movements to the music, or have your child create a free dance based on a story or concept from the book. Because your little one might want to hear the same song over and over again, just make sure you use a song that you like, too!

Kerry and Maria also picked one of their favorite Barefoot Books titles—The Animal Boogie—to show us how they would use a particular book with young movers. The Animal Boogie has illustrations and a theme that both suggest movement, and it comes with a catchy singalong video and CD. Here are a few ways to explore the book beyond simply reading it and enjoying the wonderful song:

• Read through the book and see how many movement words you can find. Examples include shake, swing, stomp, flap and leap. Write the words down on cards and hang them on a wall or window so that you and your child can see them together.

• One word at a time, see how many different ways you can use the words to move. Try shaking each body part one at a time. Can you shake your head? Your hips? Your shoulders? Then shake your whole body! This exercise will help children learn to isolate and recognize each body part. When exploring the word leap, you can practice transferring weight from one foot to the other. This is challenging for young children but is a great skill to master. For even more fun, you can make lines on the floor with tape and then practice leaping over them.

• Once you have explored all the words, play The Animal Boogie song and show each other all your newfound ways of moving!

Do you incorporate movement into reading time with your little ones? We would love to hear about it!

Tags: books, children, dance, fun, movement, people, picture books, stories