Personalized Gross Motor Game for Kids with Mirrors!

It’s time for our Light and Reflections Series with some of my fellow awesome bloggers!! Last month we focused on letter recognition by having fun with some letter tiles and water beads but this month our theme is Music and Movement!! As part of this theme, I made a fun gross motor game using a mirror and action photos of my daughter and the daycare girls!

Gross Motor Game: Mimicking Movement with Mirrors

Post contains affiliate links for your convenience, see my disclosure for more.

I don’t know about your kids but mine LOVE seeing themselves in photos! Having a simple game based around photos of themselves was such a big hit. I was surprised how long the girls played with this. While taking and printing photos add a bit of prep time to this activity I highly recommend it. The kids really had such a good time and were a sweaty mess by the end! Got them all nice and tired for nap time!

Materials needed:

• Photos of kids doing actions
• Scissors
• Mirror
• Tape/Sticky Tac

I started by taking pictures of my daughter and the daycare girls doing various actions (reaching up, covering eyes, jumping, balancing, touching toes…) and then had them printed at our local Walgreens. You can upload the photos to Walgreens online and then pick them up when they are ready, I believe Walmart and Target also do this. Don’t forget to do a quick google search for a coupon code! I paid less than $1.50 for all my photos.

I cut out each pose for each child and then laminated them. You don’t have to laminate them but they are sturdier after they go through it so they will last longer (plus I’m just obsessed with my laminator).

After they were cut out all the photo cutouts went into a basket next to the mirror so that they were easily accessible. I also added some sticky tack/putty to the mirror in four spots (if our mirror was wider I would have added more) so that the girls had something to stick their photos on with and create a sequence of movement actions for them to recreate.

They loved picking out what actions they wanted to do, sticking them on the mirror, and organizing the order they wanted to perform them in.  

It was so fun to watch them create each sequence of activities and watch as they studied the actions they were doing, comparing them against the pictures.

Adding Music: Freeze Dance Game Version:

I let the girls explore and practice mimicking each photo sequence for about a half an hour and then we kicked it up a notch by adding some music.  We turned on the music and the girls did each sequence of actions as fast as they could until the music stopped and they had to freeze doing whatever action they were mimicking at the moment until the music turned back on!

The freeze dance game was so much fun and it got them really moving!

They were jumping, bending, and moving all over the place (hence the blurry photo)!  Totally a hit! 🙂

Now don’t forget to pop over and see what Dyan, Devany, and Katie did with this month’s theme of Music and Movement!! I know I’m excited to see what these creative ladies came up with!

Glowing Floor Piano at And Next Comes L
Musical Water Experiments on the Light Table at Still Playing School
Glow in the Dark Egg Shakers at Happily Ever Mom

Next month we will be focusing on springtime activities! You can find all our upcoming Light & Reflectionsthemes below.

Looking for more crafts and activities? Check out our index for 100+ plus kids activities! Find activities by theme, materials, skills, age and much more!