Useful for childcare! Today’s recommended recreational activities, including fingerplay and games!
We’ve introduced some recreational activities to enjoy today.
Planning daily activities for a nursery or kindergarten can be quite a challenge when you’re constantly thinking, “What should we do today?”
In this article, fun recreation ideas are updated every day, so before you start brainstorming, take a quick look here!
Some activities require materials, but once you decide on what to do, things will move along smoothly—so please make good use of this article.
By enjoying a variety of activities every day, children gain lots of new experiences, and teachers can expand their repertoire, too!
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Useful for childcare! Today’s recommended recreations, including finger plays and games! (21–30)
tea kettle lid stand (chatsubo)
A “cha-tsubo” is a jar used to store tea leaves.
Since it is usually sealed with Japanese paper, it has no lid, and this fact is turned into a hand-play song.
You make one hand the tea jar and the other hand the lid, but as you switch which hand is the lid or the jar, it gets confusing and surprisingly lively.
The song has a good rhythm, so it’s a fun activity even just to sing.
Friendship Activity Card
This is a recreation activity where you prepare cards that depict different exercises, and the children perform the exercise shown on the card they pick.
They need to remember in advance what each picture represents, but you can also see them cooperating with one another as they try to recall, thinking, “What was this again?” It’s also recommended to rotate the pairs of children as you go.
Gesture Game
A classic recreation game: charades.
A person looks at a card with a prompt and expresses it using only gestures, while the others try to guess what it is.
You must not talk—gestures only.
It might work well for adults to do the gestures and the children to watch and guess.
Try using prompts that are easy for kids to understand, such as distinctive animals or vehicles.
Dance and gymnastics
Dance and gymnastics are perfect for recreational activities! Songs like Keropons’ “Ebi Kanikusu,” Foorin’s “Paprika,” and dances from Yo-kai Watch, and more! It’s fine to pick any of the many songs that work for dances or exercises.
Everyone can have a great time by dancing together to songs everyone knows.
You can even perform them as-is at a sports day or school performance.
Signaling Game
A game called the Signal Game uses traffic light colors as commands, with different actions depending on the color.
When the caller says “blue,” you take one step forward; “yellow” means take one step back; and “red” means stop where you are.
It sounds very simple, but since both red (aka) and blue (ao) start with the same vowel sound in Japanese, you’ll make mistakes if you’re not listening carefully, and the game gets very exciting when you speed up the tempo.
It’s also a great way to teach children about traffic light colors and to be mindful of them in daily life.
An extra rule that makes it even more fun is that if the caller says any word other than a color, you have to go back to the starting line or you’ll get caught.
Rag-wiping race
The Osaka Towel Wholesale Trade Association designated April 29 as Towel Day.
It’s said that people use towels most frequently from early spring to early summer.
Children are very familiar with towels too, using them for wiping floors and tables, but wringing them out by hand after washing can take a lot of strength for kids.
When wringing a towel, the vertical wring is recommended.
By keeping the elbows close to the body and rotating the wrists, you can use the strength of your arms and wring more tightly.
Wringing towels also helps build grip strength, so try practicing it with your children!
Fishing game
How about a fishing game? Make lots of fish out of origami and attach a paper clip to the mouth of each one.
For the fishing rod, tie a string to an easy-to-hold stick and attach a magnet to the end.
Lay out a vinyl sheet to represent water, place the fish on it, and catch them so the magnet snaps onto the clips.
It would be fun for everyone to make the fish together and draw illustrations or patterns on them.
Let’s also try making colorful, original fishing rods!