Name Recognition and Large Motor…Together!
This was a new activity for our class and it was such a huge success that we did it every day this week, so I absolutely had to share it with you!
Each child got a balloon with their name written on one side, and their first initial on the other side. The children were told that they could do anything that they wanted with their balloon – they just had one rule to follow: They could not use someone else’s balloon.
This meant that they had to recognize their name so that they were not accidentally taking someone else’s balloon as they played.
The children threw their balloons, hit them like volleyballs, danced with them (we usually put music on when we did this), tossed them to each other, they played for half an hour or more each time, and not once did we have an argument about whose balloon was whose. The older children helped the younger ones, and they all managed to keep track of their own balloons.
Some notes about the activity:
– I made sure all of the balloons were the same color so there weren’t arguments about color
– there were other “rules” (If you pop your balloon you don’t get another one, the balloon doesn’t go in your mouth, etc.) but we focused on the one major rule
– the children loved this activity because it was unstructured! we just let them move and play.