Sing, Play, Learn with MacPhail®: The Finger Family

A well-known song in our SPL curriculum is Finger Family. This song is fun to do with children at many ages and stages of development. There are several areas of learning that are occurring during this song that you might not even be aware of.

Learning

Vocal Exploration – practicing high and low sounds with our voices as we move our body up and down. Vocal exploration exercises help children physically feel pitch changes. Playing with their voices is an important step to controlling them.

Visual tracking – moving eyes up/down and side-to-side following fingers or objects. Tracking skills are important because they allow children to follow a moving object, scan their environment for information, direct hand movements, and shift gaze from one thing to another.

Body Awareness – learning where body parts are and labeling them. It helps your child know where they are in a given space.

Object permanence – learning that an object still exists even when you cannot see it. Understanding object permanence signals are an important to developing working memory and abstract concepts.

Finger Family

Finger family up and finger family down,

finger family dancing all around the town.

Dance them on your shoulders, dance the on your head.

Dance them on your knees then tuck them into bed.

1-2-3 SURPRISE!!