Open your hands, shut them again, and watch your toddler’s face light up the instant they realise they can do it too. Finger Plays and Songs uses simple, repetitive hand motions set to music to build coordination and memory, one verse at a time.
Why this game matters
Songs with accompanying hand motions ask a toddler to do two things at once, listen to and remember a sequence of words, and coordinate their hands to match specific movements at specific moments. That combination genuinely exercises working memory and physical coordination together, and the repetition built into most finger-play songs gives a toddler’s brain multiple passes at the same sequence, which is exactly what helps it stick.
What you need
Nothing but your own voice, and a few songs you know or can learn.
How to play
Choose a finger-play or action song and perform the hand motions together as you sing. Popular options in English include “Open, Shut Them,” “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes,” and “The Wheels on the Bus,” though finger plays and action songs exist in many languages and cultural traditions, and whatever songs are familiar from your own family or community work just as well.
Start slowly so your toddler can follow the motions, then repeat the song regularly, since familiarity is part of what makes this fun. Vary your tempo occasionally, speeding up or slowing down, and build in small surprises, a pause before a tickle, a sudden loud part, which toddlers at this age tend to find especially delightful.
Variations
Search for finger-play songs on video platforms if you’d like to learn new ones; there are many available showing the exact hand motions alongside the lyrics, in a wide range of languages.
Let your toddler “lead” a familiar song once they know it well, watching to see how much of the sequence they can perform from memory, which is a nice, informal way to notice how much they’ve genuinely learned.
Why repetition is the whole point
Toddlers don’t tire of the same song the way adults often do, and that’s not incidental to how this game works, it’s central to it. Each repetition gives a toddler another chance to anticipate what comes next, attempt the motion a little more independently, and strengthen the memory of the sequence. Resist the urge to move on to something new too quickly; a song sung for the fiftieth time is still doing real cognitive work.
A few familiar verses and a handful of hand motions, repeated often, cost nothing and fit into almost any spare moment, waiting for a bus, before bed, in a car seat. For a toddler at this age, that repeated, musical practice is genuinely valuable brain-building, wrapped inside something that simply feels like a fun little song.
