Jun 1

Jun 1 My turn, your turn

Last night, my almost 3 year old and I were having a bath together. He started making a funny sound. I put it into a song:

Twinkle, twinkle, little star
How I wonder what you *SOUND*
All of a sudden, my son continued from where I was up to:
Up above the world so *SOUND*
Then I hear “Mummy’s turn” - FANTASTIC – let’s go with it!
Like a diamond in the *SOUND*
We continued with this game for about 5 minutes – lots of our familiar songs were sung, and many cackles along the way. How fun is taking turns?!

Here are some ways I use music to practice turn-taking skills:

Very young bubs:
Take turns communicating with your little one, even before they have words. Give them space to respond before you jump in (this is hard for me!). Remember that they may not always communicate with sounds – look out for little gestures or looks.
This one-to-one interaction helps your little one build confidence, vocabulary and also help learn how to pay attention to someone else.

As they get older:

Copying your sounds
This is my little one when he was 15 months old copying my silly sounds. We still make sounds for each other to copy all the time - in the shower, in the car, nappy changes.

Ball-rolling
When we roll the ball around the circle to our friends, we are practising waiting for the ball to come to us. Bron has lots of great ball rolling songs in her blog HERE.

Playing instruments
“Oh dear, we’ve only got one drum! How about you have a turn while we sing our song, and then I can have a turn?”
If that is a bit tricky, try having simultaneous turns:
“How about you play the shakers and I play the triangle, then we can swap”

Choosing actions for dancing
Put on some music and take turns to decide what actions you can do. This helps to build creative expression, but it’s also a great way to show your little one a wide variety of ways we can move our body.

Echo songs:
Echo songs are a fantastic way to make music. Not only does it help develop pitch and vocabulary, it’s a great example of turn taking. Lucy has a whole bunch of her favourite echo songs in a blog post HERE.

Here is one of my favourites…
Poor in the oil (echo) Show actions
Sprinkle in the popcorn (echo) Show actions
Put on the lid (echo) Show actions
Turn up the heat (echo) Show actions
Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle, sizzle x 3 Rub hands together
POP! Jump up

The popcorn’s in the popper Child jumps up and down until the word ‘stop’
Let it pop, pop, pop
The popcorn’s in the popper
Let it pop, pop, pop
The popcorn’s in the popper
Let it pop, pop, pop
Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop
Now it’s time to stop