🎓 Skills Your Child Will Develop

• 🧠 Brain-Body Connection — Research consistently shows that physical activity directly improves concentration, working memory, and academic readiness — making fitness time one of the highest-return educational investments in a preschooler's day.
• 🌱 Lifelong Active Habits — Children who have joyful physical experiences in the preschool years are dramatically more likely to be active adolescents and adults — making every positive movement experience an investment in lifelong health.
• 🏃 Gross Motor Skills — Running, jumping, hopping, and climbing build the large muscle strength, coordination, and body control that physical activities, sports, and even handwriting readiness depend on.
• 🧭 Spatial Awareness — Moving through and around obstacles, understanding where their body is in space, and following directional instructions develops the spatial body awareness that sports, dance, and coordinated movement require.

Those folks at Cranium know how to make fun games -- and one of the more fun games for the preschool set and older is Hullabaloo. Hullabaloo gets preschoolers up off of the couch and engaged in active play, encouraging movement and fitness with a variety of instructions to keep little bodies in motion.

The game includes a speaker and a variety of "pads" with different shapes, colors, animals, foods and instruments. With upbeat music, the announcer instructs the players to move in different ways (tippy-toe, crawl, fly, jump, skip, etc.) to a certain color, shape, animal or instrument. After a variety of instructions, players are asked to "freeze" where they are standing. The announcer then asks "Is anyone standing on __________ (spaghetti, tiger, banana, etc.) -- if so, you win." The winner is then instructed to do a silly dance or take a bow.

Hullabaloo is great fun and provides an interesting way for preschoolers to move, shake and be active. The rapid pace of the game keeps preschoolers interested and moves things along quickly so no one has time to dwell on whether or not they won the round. With the variety of activities involved, including opportunities for "twister" type instructions, the game gets kids moving, improves coordination, and provides easy instructions to follow.

Variation on a Theme

Hullabaloo also offers a DVD version -- Amazing Animal Adventure. This time, the announcer is on the DVD, as well as animation and video footage (from National Geographic) to provide a more unique game experience. With the Animal Adventure theme, the video gives opportunities for preschoolers to learn more about the animals in the game.

Preschool Fitness Skills

While the game may focus on silliness and movement, the key is that preschoolers are engaging in a game that is highly active. The opportunities provided for preschoolers to improve coordination and other skills (jumping, skipping, flying), while thinking quickly and doing other silly movements and dances promotes the fun part of preschool fitness. Think outside of the box for your preschooler's fitness activities -- Hullabaloo by Cranium is an excellent way to engage in a fit activity.