Active Indoor Play: Dance Through the Alphabet

The weather outside is frightful, and the indoors might not be so delightful if your kids are filled with pent up energy. My little ones are VERY active and when they don’t get to play outside we have to get creative. I’ve shared before about our dance parties and indoor obstacle courses. Today I’m sharing a new idea we tried this week as part of the Gross Motor Activities from A to Z Series with Still Playing School – lots of great ideas for active indoor play.  We’ve been working on the alphabet as part of our home preschool, and the Bear can now identify all of his letters. To practice them while getting some exercise we had an alphabet dance party. With the whole body involved, simple silly dancing becomes a gross motor skill development tool. It was silly, fun, and both kids really got in to it. Best of all you don’t need anything except a little creativity and music. Bonus: Enter to win a Parachute Pack to take active play to the next level. We switch on a favorite Pandora station or use one of my Amazon playlists. We are Amazon Prime members so we get a TON of free music – you can get a free 30 day trial here. I tell the kids we will try to dance our way through the whole alphabet, like all the letters. We started with A and did our best to make ourselves look like the letter with our arms in a pointed triangle over our heads. We danced like crazy like that for a few seconds, then moved on to B. Bear decided that B should buzz like a bee, so we made a sideways B with our arms as wings and buzzed along for a bit. Some letters are simple and easy, while others may challenge you a bit. Accuracy doesn’t matter – just fun and active play. Encouraging kids to jump, twist, turn, bend, shuffle, hop, and shimmy really gets them moving and further developing their gross motor skills. Another version of this activity would be to sing the Alphabet song while doing a motion for each letter. Still fun, but much quicker and great for practicing the song. Let your kids get creative with it and ask them how the letter should dance. They might come up with something really fun. The Bear insisted that the letter S had to be on the floor and slither like a snake. Perfect. We had a very silly and entertaining time and great fun with no set up and no equipment. I love an activity that gets kids thinking outside the lines to come up with the answer to a question like “How does a letter dance?”. Be sure to check out the rest of the Gross Motor Activities from A to Z Series this month at Still Playing School to find TONS of great ideas to keep your kids active. Enter the giveaway below to win a fun Parachute Pack to encourage lots of active play with your crew. Use the Rafflecopter form to enter, or if you have trouble viewing it on your mobile device click this link. a Rafflecopter giveaway