Creative Ways to Add Movement into Your Young Child’s Day

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This episode of the Learn With Less® podcast is the final of a 4-part series about incorporating play, language, music, and movement, into everyday routines. These episodes feature a conversation between Ayelet Marinovich (pediatric speech-language pathologist, founder & creator of the Learn With Less® curriculum) and Miranda Zoumbaris (early childhood educator & interventionist, licensed Learn With Less® facilitator, and entrepreneur).

In this series, we’ll explore the four pillars of the Learn With Less® framework, and examine how we can incorporate more of each of those into our everyday routines to support connection and early learning.

For each episode, we chose one routine and one everyday object, and explored the ways in which we could infuse developmentally enriching experiences into everyday life, and helping families see they can do this using the time, energy, and materials they already have.

Be sure to check over at our Instagram and Facebook pages (linked below) for additional content that may support your understanding and experience of these episodes. As we release each episode, we’ll link to them here in the show notes so you can access them easily.

In this episode, we discussed:

• What is MOVE (as we define it in the Learn With Less® curriculum), and how it can be woven into everyday routines



• How to take the routine of dressing (putting on and taking off coats, zippers, etc!), and incorporate more opportunities for movement into these moments



• How we can adapt movement activities based on our body’s needs or the needs of our children



• Adapting an environment to include opportunities for movement and integrating a child’s needs



• How to incorporate movement into simple routines, using simple, everyday objects



• How to include young children within an activity by facilitating opportunities for movement



• The value of learning in community, of parallel processing with other families, and of experiencing the practice of following your child’s lead, through caregiver and child classes like those led by licensed Learn With Less® facilitators

Helpful Resources to Acknowledge For This Episode:

Daily Routines Freebie: download Miranda’s free handout about winter dressing, and get ideas for incorporating play, talk, sing, and move into your everyday routines!

Free Infant/Toddler Development Blueprint: what are the four major areas of early development… and how can you use the pillars of Learn With Less® to support that learning, using the time, energy, and materials you already have?! Download our free blueprint today.

How to Incorporate Play into Everyday Routines: our first episode in this podcast series, featuring a conversation with Miranda Zoumbaris and Ayelet Marinovich

How to Incorporate Language Into Everyday Routines, the second episode in this 4-part series!

How to Incorporate Music Into Everyday Routines, the third episode in this 4-part series!

The Power of Play Through Movement, a Learn With Less® podcast episode featuring physical therapist, Wendi McKenna

What Is Sensory Processing?, a Learn With Less® podcast episode featuring occupational therapist, Christie Kiley

Learn With Less® Facilitator Training & Certification Program, helping educators and therapists create lasting impact in their communities with a high quality, evidence-based, “plug & play” program

Expand Your Impact Workshop Bundle: for early childhood educators and developmental therapists hoping to serve new families in their community and support themselves, using their existing skills

Learn With Less® Bundle: our best infant and toddler development resources for families and educators alike, including our bestselling books Understanding Your Baby and Understanding Your Toddler, our acclaimed family music album, recorded Learn With Less® “caregiver & me” classes, and a caregiver handout featuring ideas for carryover in the home

Learn With Less® Stories: Testimonials from educators who’ve provided the Learn With Less® infant/toddler family enrichment curriculum and families who’ve experienced our programming.

Connect With Us:

Miranda: Website / Facebook / Instagram

Ayelet: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest

Text Transcript of this Episode

Ayelet: Okay, welcome back to the Learn With Less® podcast. And welcome to my co-host for these four episodes, Miranda Zoumbaris! Hi Miranda!

Miranda: Hello! I’m glad to be back.

Ayelet: I can’t believe this is the last one, of this installment. Tell us over on the socials: did you enjoy this? Was fun to have Miranda join us in all four episodes. This is so fun. I had a great time. It is nice to have a co-host, actually. Thank you so much, Miranda, for all your contributions to the last few weeks of content and things that we’ve been talking about. This conversation has just been so much fun to have and connect with people over on social media, Instagram and Facebook over on @learnwithless and @earlyinterventionmama!

Why don’t we go ahead and finish out our series of our four Learn With Less® pillars, with the final installment of MOVE. So again, just like we’ve been doing in the last few episodes, and if you haven’t already listened to those, go ahead and check those out. We’ve got three other wonderful episodes for you about the other three pillars of Learn With Less® which include PLAY, TALK, and SING.

But today we’re going to talk about MOVE, what move is. We’re going to give you some examples about how this pillar of MOVE can be woven into those everyday routines. And the routine that we’re going to be talking about with relation to one particular object… we’re going to talk about this notion of dressing, coats, zippers.

Learning About Motor and Sensory Development

So that’s what we’re gonna be chatting about today. Let me go ahead and introduce  the ways that we define this pillar of move within the Learn With Less® curriculum and framework. So movement, as we know, can be very big movements, very small movements, proprioceptive movement. Gross motor movement and fine motor skills, all kinds of visual spatial movements, there’s lots of different pieces to movement, and then motor and sensory development, in addition to how MOVE can support all other aspects and areas of early development.

First of all, move