10 Movement Songs For Preschoolers – Keep Your Kiddos Moving
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It's no shock that toddlers and preschoolers are busy, busy kiddos. They are constantly moving, exploring, and learning through hands-on play. Movement songs are a fun way to get the wiggles out. Check out this list of ten movement songs for preschoolers here.
Movement songs are an excellent way to work on specific gross motor skills such as bilateral coordination, crossing midline plus getting bonus proprioceptive and vestibular input.
Here are some fun movement songs for toddlers and preschoolers with some movement suggestions to go along with each song.
All of these songs can be found on YouTube so you can see exactly how each song and movement should go.
Your preschoolers are going to love these fun action songs with tunes they probably already know.
10 Movement Songs for Toddlers and Preschoolers
If You're Happy And You Know It – Movements include clapping hands, stomping feet, shouting, and then doing all 3 in a row.
Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes – Movements include using both hands to touch your head, shoulders knees toes, eyes, mouth, ears, and nose. A great activity for body awareness too.
Shake Your Sillies Out (The Wiggles) – Movements include shaking, nodding, clapping, jumping, and then stretching your bodies out as a rest.
The Hokey Pokey – Movements include using both sides of the body and discriminating between the left and right sides of the body.
Silly Dance Contest (Jim Gill) – We love this one because it works with lots of fun bilateral coordination moves and also works on terms like fast and slow.
The Goldfish (Let's Go Swimming) (Laurie Berkner) – Following the motions to a fun and silly song about goldfish doing things underwater.
Run Baby Run (Caspar Babypants) – Running in place, jumping, spinning, and many other fun movements with this song!
The Dinosaur Stomp (Mother Goose Playhouse Kids Song) – Stomping, chomping, crunching, munching, and even roaring like a dinosaur. A very fun song!
Rolly Polly (Mother Goose Playhouse Kids Song) – This one is an excellent song for learning about words such as up, down, in, out, left, right, and more!
Let's Get Movin' (Lauren Meyer) – Shaking to the side, hoping, turning around, touching the ground, and moving to the beat of the music.
I hope you enjoy these fun songs with your preschoolers.
My friend Angela has written an amazing song transitions book. It's a great way to help kids transition from one task to another. Grab your copy of Songs & Rhymes for Transitions to use in your preschool classroom or therapy sessions.
Do you have a favorite movement song that I missed? Let me know in the comments below.
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Heather Greutman, COTA
Heather Greutman is a Certified Occupational Therapy Assistant with experience in school-based OT services for preschool through high school. She uses her background to share child development tips, tools, and strategies for parents, educators, and therapists. She is the author of many ebooks including The Basics of Fine Motor Skills, and Basics of Pre-Writing Skills, and co-author of Sensory Processing Explained: A Handbook for Parents and Educators.
Google Nancy Stewart. She has great songs for preschool kids. Lots are movement songs. Dinocars and Dinosaur Dance Floor are some of my favorite. Don’t forget about Looby Loo and London Bridge.
Do you have any of the words to these songs. We do not have screen time for our little ones. The songs are good recommendations, many are new to me so thank you so much for putting them together. The Roly Poly song seems to need the video for the “in” concept.
Hi, I don’t. It becomes a copyright issue for me to include them all without permission from each author. I’m glad you found some new ones to include!
Thank you , those are great ides.
I like and kids toooo The New Zoo Review and Listen And Move by Greg Scelsa
Best regards and thank you for shering
Thank you so much for this list! I just realized yesterday that preschool is starting a week later than I thought. Our summer sitter has already said goodbye. Two weeks is a looong time to make the most of with 2.75 year old twins. They are going to LOVE these when we start tomorrow!!!
Awesome, you’re welcome EJ! Have fun!