In keeping with our watermelon theme this week, I wanted to teach by toddler a fun song that was either about watermelons or at least mentioned them. The first song that came to mind was the classic “Down By the Bay”. I quickly went to You Tube and was happy to find a sweet little video for us to watch and sing along to (check out our favorite kids songs–with videos!).

I then wanted to create some visuals to use for all of the other times that we will sing the song and not be watching the video. I was pleasantly surprised to find a pdf from kizclub that already had visuals as well as the printed song and vocabulary cards! Because my son is a toddler, we are only in need of the animals to use as visual aids (but what a super resource to use with older children!).

From the pdf, I can print the page that contains the animals (you can choose from color or black and white), paste them onto card stock, wrap them in contact paper to ensure their safety, and then cut them out. As we sing the song, my son can then learn to identify the animals we are singing about. As he starts to show comprehension, I can make it a game and present the animals in a field so that he has to independently choose. This is such a great activity for young children. It can be used for songs, for nursery rhymes or even simple books. One tip when implementing the identification…begin with a field of 1-3 items. This means that you only want to lay out 1-3 items in front of the child when they are learning identification. This provides the child with a reasonable amount of choices and visual stimuli without overwhelming them. As they start to master the activity and can quickly and confidently choose items in the field, more choices can be added.