Background information

Notes on child development

Play is crucial to the development of children’s gross and fine motor skills. Through play, children practice and perfect control and coordination of large body movements, as well as small movements of hands and fingers. Gross motor skills involve control of the arms, legs, head, and trunk. Fine motor skills involve the careful control of small muscles in the hands, feet, fingers, and toes. Controlling the muscles of the tongue and lips in order to speak or sing is also a fine motor skill. Find out more here.

Everyday moments can be fun learning opportunities for children. Pretending, creating and helping allows kids to discover new things. Play helps children learn about themselves and where they fit in the world. Evidence shows that play can support learning across physical, social, emotional and intellectual areas of development. Find out more here.

Educator notes

If your children are struggling with the alien concept, go back to animals. One kid can move like an animal but can't mention what animal they're thinking of, and the second kid can mirror them.

However, this also isn't meant to be a structured movement game. We're not trying to move in a specific way. We're exploring different ways of moving - sometimes random, pretty fluid, and always seeing where the fun takes us.

There's no wrong way to do this, except by not watching closely and being respectful of our partners in trying to match their movements.

Activity outline

Step 1.

Get everyone to sit in a circle.

Step 2.

Ask them to imagine an alien from another planet:

I wonder what they would look like. Do they look like us?
I wonder how they would move. Would they move like us? Do they walk like normal or in a weird, alien way?
Do they stand up tall on two legs? Or are they lower to the ground?
Do they have arms? With elbows? Or tentacles?

Have some fun discussing all your wacky ideas.

There's always an opportunity to be developing childrens' communication skills through casual conversation. To ask quality questions:

Position yourself as curious, about the world but also the child’s thoughts

Ask genuine questions (those that you don’t know the answer to - or at least be ready for an interesting answer based on a childrens' perspective!)

Try to avoid judging answers as right or wrong

Using questions that begin with “I wonder…” is a great way to get children sharing their own ideas; ‘I wonder…” questions don’t necessarily have a correct answer, leaving children open to explore and share their own ideas without fear of being wrong.

Continue questioning after the child has answered, asking, “Why do you say that?” This further reveals a child’s thinking

For more evidence-based advice on developing oral language in children click here.

Step 3.

Explain that you're going to pretend to be one of these aliens. Move into the middle of the circle and start moving around.

This alien might bob down with one step, and spring up with the next step, creating a high and low sort of walk. It might slowly wiggle its 'tentacles' as it goes.

Step 4.

Invite a child into the circle with you. Face each other. Imagine you are looking at your reflection in a mirror, although you don't have to explain this. Just ask the child to copy your movements. When you wiggle one arm, they should wiggle their arm. When you bob down, they should too. When you take a step to the left, they would follow you.

Step 5.

Spend some time having them copy your alien movements. Imagine it's two aliens meeting each other for the first time and trying to figure one another out by mimicking one another.

Or just focus on the exercise of mirroring your partner.

Step 6.

After you've had a good go, stop the alien dance. Tell your partner that now they are going to pretend to be a new type of alien. Step yourself out of the circle.

How would they move? How do they walk and move around? How do they move their arms and the rest of their body?

Step 7.

When they have sufficiently developed a new alien, invite someone else to step into the circle and mirror them. Remind the second child that this activity is all about matching their partner's movements. They'll have a chance to be the leader soon enough. For now, their focus should be all about copying.

Step 8.

Repeat these steps until everyone has had a chance to create the alien and to be the mirror-er. For the last child, you can step back into the ring yourself and copy their movements.

Step 9.

A fun follow up might be to go and draw your aliens.

Evaluation

Complete analysis of learning, listing evidence about:

Belonging	Finding something of interest
Communication	Expressing an idea or feeling
Exploration	Engaging with challenge and persisting when difficulty arises
Wellbeing	Being involved

Move like an Alien - Physical Movement Game

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