Wriggle and Read
Active literacy, music and movement for busy toddlers.
Wriggle and Read has been specifically designed with your toddler’s developmental needs in mind, and aims to empower parents with ideas and strategies to continue the fun and learning at home.
Each session includes a body and vocal warm-up, so your toddler can shake their sillies out, and play around with vocal sounds. (Phonemic awareness, or the ability to hear the smaller sounds that make up words, is one of the key skills in reading.)
This is followed by a songs and rhymes segment, where you and your child can enjoy all the childhood classics you know and love, while your toddler practices fine and gross motor movements and actions.
After that, your friendly neighbourhood librarian will read an “active literacy” book–because reading doesn’t need to be a quiet, sitting down activity, it can be loud, exciting, jumping around activity! This helps restless toddlers develop a love for books and reading.
Then, the toddlers and their grown-ups can enjoy making music together, as each week we explore a different percussion instrument.
Next, each family gets a copy of the same book, to read along with the librarian. You and your busy toddler can practice “Conversational Reading“, talking and interacting about all the things you see in the book.
And finally, each session concludes by exploring a different movement prop, and all the myriad creative ways you can play with simple objects: balls, bean bags, tubes, scarves, a parachute, a giant scrunchie, and more.
We encourage families to hang around after the session, to get to know one another, and enjoy an informal little ‘playgroup’.