Songs for Summer - Part 2!
Last month I shared some of our summer plans with you, focusing on speech and auditory processing skills. This month we are continuing with our underwater theme, but focusing on cognitive skills and sensorimotor skills!
Songs for Sensorimotor Skills
We love to use sensorimotor props for movement in our sessions and groups. In addition to the octoband mentioned below, we love the stretchy band, scarves, and ribbons to get our kids movin’ and groovin’!
Welcome to the Sea – I wrote this song for an original musical that one of my groups just performed. We used the octoband, and created our own movements to the song. We moved the band up and down slowly for the first part of the song, then created faster movements for the second half of the song. You can let your kids be as creative as they want and make fun movements to the song! The octoband also provides great sensory feedback for tactile sensory seekers.
Just Dance – There are so many great Just Dance videos on YouTube that are ocean-themed. I love to put these on as a brain break and fun, movement time to let the kids get their wiggles out. It’s also a perfect opportunity to work on gross motor skills, endurance, and following visual directions. You can add targets to hit, such as drums, throughout the song to work on increasing range of motion in the upper and lower extremities.
Songs for Cognitive Skills
From following directions to executive function skills, there are so many cognitive skills to work on! Just because it’s summer, doesn’t mean we take it easy and stop growing our brains. Check out these ideas to keep kid’s brains active all summer long!
Pirates of the Caribbean Boomwhacker play-a-long – I found this video last summer and my groups asked to play it every week! If you have a set of boomwhackers, it’s as simple as passing out the colors in the video to each child and cueing them to play-a-long with the video. This is a great opportunity to work on following directions, both visually and verbally.
Down by the Bay (and Down by the Riverside) – Every time I hear someone sing this song, I hear a new verse I never knew existed! When I sing this song with my clients, I use some of the classic verses such as “did you ever see a whale with a polka-dotted tail” and “did you ever see a bear combing his hair”. But I also let them create their own original verses! This gives them a chance to use some executive function skills like decision-making, while also practicing rhyme schemes and communication skills.
I hope these ideas come in handy for your summer sessions! If you are looking for even more summer session ideas, check out our posts from last year’s summer theme – Moana.
We love to hear from our community. What ideas would you like us to share more of to help your children learn and grow? Email us at info@dynamiclynks.com with all of your questions or ideas to help us better serve you!
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