Move to Learn: Integrating Movement into the Early Childhood Classroom

Winner of the Creative Child Awards' Preferred Choice Award, Tillywig Toy Awards' Brain Child Award, and Academic's Choice Smart Book Award.

When we imagine happy young children, we picture exuberant and unbridled movement. Not only is movement natural, it is also necessary for optimal physical, cognitive, emotional, and social development. Moving children are developing children. With Move to Learn, educators can easily turn their classrooms into an environment that encourages movement activities rich in sensory, perceptual, and visual-motor experiences.

Through simple strategies and activities, Move to Learn seamlessly integrates fine and gross motor-skill development across the early childhood curriculum. With most activities listed in order of difficulty, choosing the right one is easy! Regardless of the number of children, the physical classroom size, or the quality or quantity of equipment available, the ideas in Move to Learn are flexible enough to get every classroom moving.

Joye Newman is a perceptual motor therapist and the director of Kids Moving Company, a popular creative movement company in Bethesda, Maryland. In her spare time, she enjoys Israeli folk dancing, reading, and knitting (but not all at once).

Miriam P. Feinberg is a teacher trainer, curriculum writer, and parent educator. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with her husband and thoroughly enjoys her adult children and six fabulous grandchildren.