TOS Review: Fun Physical Activities for Young Children

My most recent curriculum to review with the Old Schoolhouse Review Crew has been Dr. Craft’s Active Play! Fun Physical Activities for Young Children from Dr. Craft’s Active Play Books. I used this with Sterling (5), Ruby (4), and Charlotte (2), although my older girls and Pierce couldn’t resist joining it a bit as well.

From their website: 8½ x 11 with 130 pages with DVD showing 30 physical activities
This book and DVD set:

Shows how to make physical activities irresistible.
Teaches academic concepts through physical activity.
Includes a chapter of physical activities for infants, 6 months to 15 months of age.
Includes physical activity ideas for school-age children.

Active Play! is all about getting your young children moving. With much information regarding the importance of physical activity for young children, it’s a great resource for ideas on how to do this. With 52 activities suggested, 30 of them demonstrated on the DVD, all using pretty ordinary household objects, (Laundry baskets get new life!) this book could be a valuable tool with daycares, classrooms, VBS, and birthday parties. It has a great list of all the activities and the skills they help practice.

With six super active children who don’t lack at all for physical activity, I don’t really want to organize their play. They’re pretty great at that all on their own. On a rainy day though, I might refer back to this book to see what might keep them busy and entertained inside the house. It’s full of great ideas that aren’t overly competitive – great when you have different abilities present. The instructions are clear and easy to follow. The activities are easy enough to set up that my older girls (9 and 8) can do it, and they love the play “teacher” – having them all playing together and helping one another helps all of them learn lifelong skills.

I took photos of the day we did “Matching Socks”. It was a favorite all around, with minimal prep for me and the kids had a blast on a sunny day. We grabbed a bunch of pairs of socks, left one of each pair in a pile and spread the other of the pair around in the front yard. Each kid grabbed one from the pile and set out to find it’s match as quickly as possible. Since our yard is a hill, we had a lot of tipping over as they bent for socks. Oh, the giggles. Even Pierce (18 months) gathered up socks. He didn’t quite get the rules, but he was very concerned that we’d scattered our laundry all over the yard. (Yes, he’s pants-less. I am so sorry. We’re approaching potty training, and I didn’t plan on him being included this go around – but he was having too much fun not to photograph him too!)

Dr. Craft’s Active Play! Fun Physical Activities for Young Children is available here for $39.00 plus taxes and shipping. It’s set up well enough to work for young new walkers and up, with older children helping with set up and helping the younger children. Each activity took us about 10 minutes to complete, but the kids chose to continue playing long after we finished the first round.

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