Spider Week, Day 4: Incy Wincy Spider

I had a visit to work scheduled for today so I knew I'd need to come up with an activity that Laurie could do with his Dad. Mr Click is a fabulous father but the arts and crafts side of things is really more my thing. A combination of an early finish at work, and a late lunch meant that this was an activity all three of us were able to do together. I handed Mr Click the camera so I was able to get some lovely (albeit slightly blurry) photos of Laurie and I.

Today's activity was inspired by the fact that today is National Poetry Day. I figured it was a good day to focus on a nursery rhyme. We've been singing Incy Wincy Spider since the beginning of the week (and for a while before that too) so it's on that Laurie's Dad is definitely familiar with. Mr Click enjoys singing nursery rhymes (and other songs) but he doesn't always remember the words and just makes them up as he goes along. It's good fun but they're not always easily replicated afterwards.

Laurie's a very musical child. My poor musical abilities don't seem to have hindered him in any way. He loves listening to music and has shown a definite interest in Mr Click's keyboard. He's got his own mini one now, and happily plays it while singing along. I think I might have a little mini Jools Holland on my hands!

We looked up an easy version of Incy Wincy Spider online, just the melody, we didn't need anything complicated. The main point of the exercise was getting Laurie to bang on the keyboard and have a go at making some noise.

I sang along too, poor kid.

We experimented with playing it faster and slower, choosing different 'voices' on the keyboard (Laurie was a fan of the Big Brass Band option, truly his father's son), and with me guiding his little hand to hit the right keys.

Mr Click is already planning on trying to find some more suitable music to play with Laurie on his lap in the coming weeks. We found a big book of children's music I acquired some years ago. It's got one of Laurie's favourites, the Mna Mna song from The Muppets, along with The Marvellous Toy (which is one of mine) so I think they'll be top of the list of requests.