Integrating Movement into the Kindergarten Curriculum

As kindergarten teachers, we believe that it is imperative that we teach to the different learning styles in our classroom. We also believe that in order to keep the children's attention throughout the day, we need to make learning fun and active for the children. Introducing movement into the academic curriculum is one way to do this. This is also a great way to provide practice in gross motor skills. Dr. Jean is an educator who has created several CD's which reinforce academic skills in all areas of the early childhood curriculum including phonemic awareness, phonics, math, social studies and science. Each of the songs on the different CD's targets a specific skill to a beat with rhythm that the children can remember and move to. There is even a resource guide available which teaches the movements to each song. Research shows that children remember better the more cues they have to link the information to. The musical rhythm and movements will add those additional cues. Besides, with songs like Phonercise, who wouldn't want to learn and move with Dr. Jean? I teach kindergarten in a suburban elementary school in Concord, North Carolina. Our children, for the most part, come to school ready to learn, but often need that extra something to keep them interested and involved throughout the day. Since our school is brand new, we don't yet have a playground for the children to get physical activity each day. By integrating movement into the different areas of the curriculum, we can provide them with a chance to both learn and exercise. We currently have 6 kindergarten classes at our school. We would like to purchase 3 of the Complete Sets of Dr. Jean CD's. They include her top 9 CD's, the three books which teach about the movements to the songs and how to integrate it into literacy centers, as well as other movement games, and a CD-Rom which demonstrates the movements to some of her songs off of the CDs. The cost is $200 per set, totaling $600. These three sets will be shared between the 6 kindergarten teachers and all kindergarten children (135+) will benefit from the materials on a daily basis. We strongly feel that all kindergarten children need the time and opportunity to practice their gross motor skills, and move throughout the day. In our busy schedule, what better way than to integrate it into their academics! These CD's are very age and developmentally appropriate for our children and most of all they are fun. It is a fantastic way to reinforce and enhance our curriculum with an alternate learning style.