Caregiver Use of Gestures During Song Activities

What is it about?

This work explores how caregivers use gestures during interactive songs. There are two primary areas explored in this work. First, the observations show that caregivers use gestures during song interactions, particularly related to the verbs within interactive songs. Second, caregivers can implement helpful gestures into song interactions with high levels of frequency and consistency given minimal training.

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Photo by Namroud Gorguis on Unsplash

Photo by Namroud Gorguis on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Songs are a frequent part of family life. However, this context has often been overlooked to focus on other contexts such as shared storybook reading. The gestures that are frequently incorporated into song activities could be a positive support for vocabulary learning. This work shows how caregivers use gestures during song activities when given minimal training. The goal is to start more conversations and exploration of using song activities to support vocabulary learning.