Question: What is Squiggle While You Wiggle?

Squiggle while you wiggle is a fantastic activity to engage children in developing the motions they need to learn in order to prepare them for writing. Squiggle while you wiggle is an activity to kickstart their journey in learning to write by doing circles, semi circles, horizonal lines and the vertical lines they will use to write a letter whilst dancing along to our favourite music.

It’s important to remember that children are not expected to write letters and their name until they attend school at the age of 5.

At Country Kids, this is something we strongly believe in and the children love when we do Squiggle while you wiggle! We focus on developing their gross and fine motor skills to imitate lines and circles in order to write each letter of the alphabet.

You will need:

Anything you can wave around in the air!

You can do Squiggle while you wiggle anywhere, with anything that can swish around.

In nursery, we like to use:

• Scarves
• Material
• Shakers
• Ribbons
• Bamboo

If you are at home, you could use:

• Cheerleading style Pom Pom's
• Ties
• Long socks
• Tea towels

We like to add some music to our Squiggle while you wiggle, some of our particular favourites in nursery are:

• Dolly Parton: 9-5
• S Club 7: Reach
• Tina Turner: Proud Mary

You can use any of your favourite 60s / 70s / 80s classics. The clue is in the title - they really do squiggle while they wiggle!

Now, let's get started!

The next part of this activity requires some adult led learning. It really doesn’t matter how silly you may feel, the more you squiggle, wiggle and have fun the more engaged the child will be in this activity.

1. Start by doing some big circles with your arms, you could do 5 one way and then 5 the opposite way.

To add some mathematical language, you could talk about clockwise and anticlockwise movements with older children. Then you could do some small circles with your wrists, again both ways.

2. Once you have done circles, you could draw lines reaching all the way to the top, and crouching all the way to the bottom, and touch the floor. These movements can go up and down, or side to side. Again, with older children you can really emphasise going left and right.

3. Next, we like to do some wavy lines, and dance around twirling around in a circle. The children are likely to do these motions to a couple of songs before they get tired or their arms hurt!

This activity is so simple but really is effective. We hope you have lots of fun trying Squiggle while you wiggle at home!

- The Country Kids Team x