Our Fun, Creative Session With A Play Parachute

We initially brought out our new play parachute for a session with a group of young children on the theme of the colour blue. They loved it and it kept them occupied for some time.
This is what we did: The parachute was laid out on the centre of the floor and the children stood around it's perimeter. Lifting it up by the handles we began by singing some fun songs about the sea and moved the parachute appropriately.

For example, we sang "a sailor went to sea, sea, sea" and the movements were up and down like the waves.

At the point when we sang about "fish in the deep blue sea, sea, sea" we threw some cut out fish on top and they had great fun trying to bounce them off (they later decorated them and took them home).
We made up several verses to this song and each time threw in something that represented what we were singing about that was found in the sea.
Children always love running underneath the parachute and so we sang the song "He's got the whole world in his hands.

" As before we all held the edges to begin with, walking around together in a circle for the world in the first verse. We then sang that he had the deep blue sea in his hands and placed the parachute on the floor, shimmering it gently like the sea. The next verse was the clear blue skies in his hands, at which point the parachute was lifted high above our heads and waved like a big cloud in the sky.

The next song was "When I was one I ate a bun the day I went to sea.

" Basically some hung onto the sides whilst gradually the children were invited onto the ship (underneath) and mimed what was sung: e.
g.
when I was two I buckled my shoe, three was climbed a tree etc.

until we reached five, I learned to dive, at which point we dropped the parachute and everyone underneath endeavoured to run out.

It helps if a good number of them know the songs well enough to still sing along in addition to all the fun, so it can be helpful to run through them first. Afterwards we all sat on top of the parachute for the story time, which was a story about fishing.
We all folded it up at the point in the story where the fishermen pulled in their nets, full of fish, which were those used earlier on that were given out to decorate.

The parachute was finally used at the end for the children to lie down on, whilst we played some relaxing music of sea sounds.
After all the fun, we encouraged them to relax their bodies and think about the session. All of this works equally well indoors or outdoors.