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During December it usually gets colder and we are stuck inside more. My kids are constantly full of energy, so I made these simple Christmas action cards for us to do along with some of our favorite active Christmas songs.
First thing you need to do is go here to download my Christmas action cards.
Then grab your favorite Christmas CD or playlist from your iPod. I downloaded some of these songs to my iPod from these albums (Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer)
Jingle Bell Rock
Rockin Around the Christmas Tree
Santa Claus is Comin to Town
Holly Jolly Christmas
Frosty the Snowman
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
Up on the Housetop
Sleighride
Run Rudolph Run
Next stick the action cards around the room on the floor. You can use painters tape to secure them in place.
Once they are ready, go around together and practice doing what each card says. Once you have come up with the different actions that you like, pick one card to start on and turn on some Christmas music!
Stay on one card while the music plays and do the action that it says. Our first one was to be a tall Christmas tree. Arms went up and legs went out... and then we put our arms down and closed our legs... simple jumping jacks.
Next we did reindeer kicks, then teddy bear crawls, etc.
For the candy cane hop we made a little candy cane to hop over. We also pretended to be Santa and did pretend climbing up stairs and chimneys!
It didn't really matter what we did... as long as we were moving!
We changed Christmas songs about every minute or two and then moved to a new card when the song changed.
My favorite was running around the house like gingerbread men!
This simple action packed activity helped us learn a few new things... like how to recognize simple Christmas words on the cards, how to follow directions, and how to do a few new simple gross motor actions. Jumping jacks are tricky for toddlers and preschoolers, so if you just do them in slow motion and jump legs out and then jump legs in that is a great start. Don't worry about arms if it is too hard.
The teddy bear crawl was the action card my daughter liked the best and got me good and exhausted because she wanted to do that card again and again. Take your kid's lead and let them pick which actions they want to do.
What Christmas action would you add to this set?
Our Christmas Music Workout with Kids is part of the Move and Learn Series that I am participating in along with Hands On: As We Grow,The Pleasantest Thing, and Coffee Cups and Crayons. I loved that it got me moving along with my kids!
Make sure to check out this week’s other Move and Learn activities below and then join the four of us next week for even more move and learn ideas!
Sight Word Jump & Grab via Hands On: As We Grow
Sight Word Snowball Fight via Coffee Cups & Crayons
Christmas Colors Toddler Game via The Pleasantest Thing
You can also check out our Move and Learn Pinterest Board for more inspiration! Or see the other posts we've shared in this series...
Turkey Alphabet Race Game with Alpha-Bits
Addition Crawling Game for Kids
Alphabet Jogging Game for Kids
Sight Word Target Practice (guest post at I Can Teach My Child)
What a brilliant idea! We've shared with our Twitter followers.
This looks fabulous! Thank you so much for sharing! I can't wait to use this next week!
I would so love to do this! However, all I have is an iPad and an iPhone an neither will pull-up the PDF :(. Would you be willing to send me the PDF file? If so, my email is lkrayfield[at]gmail.com! I'd be so appreciative and so would my lil guy!!
I loved this activity! I hope you don't mind, but I blogged about it and shared your post. I complied a list of songs from youtube that i used with each station. Thanks for this inspiration! ~Megan
swanbayfamily.blogspot.com/2013/12/toddler-chrismas-snowy-day-energy.html
I was just making something similar to this! I love how we can all be so creative!
This looks like something I could use with my Jumpin' & Jammin' group for a December music and movement program. I usually don't do programming during December, except for a PreSchool Storytime, so this looks awesome.
Very cute! Wonderful idea! Thank you for sharing!