Body awareness is important as it allows children to work on self-awareness and how to move in space. Body awareness plays a big part of motor planning and coordination as people navigate throughout their environment.
Mat Man is a significant aspect within the “Handwriting without Tears” curriculum. It incorporates pre-writing skills to build a person while promoting body awareness, sharing, socialization, sequencing and shape/line recognition.
Try this:
- Use a dry erase board or a plain piece of paper, in a sheet protector, and draw a face without a mouth. Give your child an emotion and see if they can add a mouth and other features to the pre-drawn face to create that emotion (provide a mirror to help identify various body clues for the emotions.)
- Play “Simon Says”
- Sing and move with “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” and check out some of the other versions by The Learning Station.
Or have some fun with Mat Man.
- Build Mat Man with household items; such as, cardboard boxes, plates, bottle caps, or even food to make snack time a bit more interesting.
Additional resources from Learning Without Tears.