Movement and Music: Developing Activities for Young Children

In this new guide, teachers, child care providers and parents gain the knowledge and skills they need to make informed decisions on helping children develop the intrinsic motivation to move throughout their lives. More than a listing of activities, it presents in-depth information on physical activity and music that allows the early childhood educator to match motivating physical activity and music lessons to the developmental level of the child. The Guiding Principles throughout the book focus on meeting individual needs, reciprocating environment and curriculum, integrating movement and music, involving family and community, and getting guidance through assessment and standards.

Features of this motivating book:

• Chapter objectives match to the guiding principles to tie the content of the chapter to the overall objectives of the book.
• Chapter opening scenarios illustrate key concepts.
• M2 Fun sample activities provide quick, fun ideas teachers can integrate into a lesson, or use as an activity break to engage students.
• Demonstrate Knowledge, Skills, and Disposition authentic activities relate to learning outcomes and guiding principles and require the learner to apply the objectives of the chapter to planning learning objectives and activities for children.
• Planning for Engaging physical activities and/or music standards at the end of the text provide three ways to practice the stand and show how to evaluate the learning.
• Practice for Engaging the Learner activities at the ends of chapters provide an example that the learner has to use to develop two more ways to practice the standard.
• Making Connections scenarios in each chapter illustrate the concept, skills, or knowledge developed in that chapter, giving students real-life examples of how to apply the material in the classroom.

Invigorate learning with the Enhanced Pearson eText
The Enhanced Pearson eText provides a rich, interactive learning environment designed to improve student mastery of content with the following multimedia features:

• Embedded video links in the eText provide concrete examples of text concepts and show children and early child educators in action.
• Internet resources. Weblinks to further explore content related to the chapter.

Jere Gallagher is an associate professor and serves as Associate Dean in the School of Education at the University of Pittsburgh.  Dr. Gallagher graduated from Louisiana State University with a doctorate in motor development and motor learning with minors in developmental psychology and experimental statistics.  She has extensive experience in the physical activity of children. For over 25 years she developed and directed the Kinder Kinetics Program, a program for children with and without disabilities between the ages of 3- to 12-years of age.  The program received the 2008 United Cerebral Palsy’s 2008 Humanitarian Award.  Jere has also been the Chair of the Council on Physical Education for Children, the Motor Development Academy and the Youth Sport Coalition.  More recently she was a consultant for Head Start – Body Start. All these organization are part of the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance.   Active in research, she currently studies the relationship between development of motor skills and participation in physical activity.  Her initial research, memory factors that influence motor skill learning in childhood, moved to a focus on attention and the development of balance control in children.  A second focus of her research is the relationship between children’s fitness level and cognitive function. 

 

Nancy Sayre is a retired professor of Early Childhood Education and Interim Dean of the College of Education and Human Services at Clarion University of Pennsylvania.  Her doctorate is from the University of Pittsburgh.  She has extensive experience in developing, directing, and teaching programs for young children such as the Earl R. Siler Early Childhood Child Development Complex at Clarion University. She has served on the board of the Jefferson-Clarion Head Start, the board of the National Coalition for Campus Child Care, and President of the Pennsylvania Association for the Education of Young Children.  Dr. Sayre and Dr. Gallagher had a book, The Young Child and the Environment, published in 2000 by Allyn & Bacon.