month 36:
Three years already?!
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Greetings
Where has the time gone? Your child is already three years old and celebrating another birthday! Consider adding some fun physical activity to the celebration—or any other day of the week—by playing simple games such as Follow the Leader and Animal Friends.
Remember, as your child continues to grow and develop, it’s important to make time to play every day, both indoors and outdoors. The activities and games at Active for Life provide easy ideas to develop fundamental movement skills in fun ways. For example, these indoor activities for three-year-olds and these fun outdoor activities are a great way to keep your kids engaged and moving.
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 Activities that you can do
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Here are some activities that you can do with your child to develop fundamental movement skills this month.
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1. Follow the Leader
Either indoors or outdoors, lead your child around, over, under, and through different obstacles that you find. If you're indoors, you can lead your child over, under, and around your furniture. If you're outdoors, you can lead your child over, under, and around playground equipment, trees, and shrubs. Try to vary your movements with walking, running, crawling, jumping, and hopping. Make sure you let your child have a turn at being the leader, and also make sure that you play in a safe place away from cars and dangerous objects. The idea is to continue developing your child’s balance and coordination by having fun moving in different ways.
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2. Animal Friends
Either indoors or outdoors, ask your child to pretend to be different animals with you. For example, you can flap your arms as the two of you pretend to be birds and “fly” around obstacles. You can also hop on all fours like a frog and say “ribbit-ribbit-ribbit.” Some more ideas:
- Hop on two legs with feet together and pretend to be kangaroos.
- Bend your knees, walk with your legs far apart, and swing your arms like chimpanzees.
- Walk on feet and hands and pretend to be a reptile.
- Walk on hands and knees and pretend to be kittens saying “meow.”
- Slide on the floor or ground and pretend to be snakes saying “hiss.”
- Invent other animal ideas and noises.
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Remember: Pay attention to your child’s level of interest. If your child starts to show signs of being tired or bored, it might be a sign that they are ready for a rest or a change of activity.
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 Tip of the month
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Show unconditional love
As parents, there will be occasions when we need to correct our children’s behaviour. How we communicate in these instances can have a big effect on how our children see themselves and their relationship with us. It’s important that we avoid blaming, criticizing, or fault-finding with our children. We should focus instead on the solution and help our children to achieve it. We never want to undermine their self-esteem and the trust they share with us. We want them to know that we continue to love them, even when we correct their behaviour.
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 Things to watch for this month
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These are some of the things that you might see your toddler doing this month:
- Broader range of movement abilities (running, jumping, hopping)
- Imaginative play
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