Val Sabin Training for Action Kids

Action Kids Training Courses

Action Kids at Home 1 & 2
Action Kids at Home 3 & 4

These courses are practical, interactive and explore some of the activities and music in the Action Kids at Home packs 1 to 7.

Participants learn how children can engage with a parent or key person in planned experiences which are challenging, achievable and fun to do!

The activities are fully inclusive and encourage positive, warm, trusting relationships between the child and the adult. Knowledgeable and supportive adults in this one- to one interaction can greatly enhance the child’s learning. It can also help develop self-confidence in the child as well as emotional security and wellbeing.

Course material: Action Kids at Home packs 1 & 2 or Action Kids at Home packs 3 & 4, 5 & 6 depending on the course. Each Action Kids at Home pack includes a fold-up A3 sheet of card showing 10 easy-to-use activities and an accompanying CD with 5 tracks of original music.

Action Kids Core Principles Course

This is a very full and comprehensive 1 day course for practitioners working in the Foundation Stage. Active and thought-provoking, it stimulates them to use a more interesting and enjoyable approach to physical development and guides recognition of individual children who experience certain difficulties.

Practitioners are guided through several different types of activities and are encouraged to use their creativity and a wide range of teaching and learning strategies.

The course explores how to progress and develop co-ordination, balance, mobility, spatial awareness and manipulative and aiming skills. It also encourages different and imaginative ways of enhancing and integrating all the other areas of learning through physical development.

Course manuals: Action Kids 500 & Action Kids 121. Action Kids 500 is a library of over 500 physical development activities divided into sections for ease of planning and accompanied by a CD containing 56 tracks of music written to go with activities in the manual. Action Kids 121 has been specially designed for 2 and 3 year old children at home or in a wide range of settings, and contains over 121 activities in themed sections suitable for use with individuals, pairs or small groups and accompanied by a CD containing 38 tracks of music.

Action Kids Song & Rhyme 1,2 & 3

This practical course will illustrate how these books are an invaluable aid to the development of language and communication, recognition of words, and singing. Participants will be shown how children can be encouraged to sustain attentive listening, listen with enjoyment and respond, extend their vocabulary and develop clarity and confidence in their speaking.

Special relationships can be developed through one-to-one activity, sense of community through singing and doing actions as a group, or individual independence can be nurtured when the child chooses to use the CD or DVD on their own and find out how to operate the machine.

Course manual: Action Kids Song & Rhyme (a choice of books 1, 2 or 3.) These are A3 books with brightly illustrated 3D-effect pictures containing 16 traditional songs and nursery rhymes. Participants may choose 1 of the 3 books in the series.

Accompanying each book is a CD of music and a DVD showing actions to the songs on two levels of difficulty – one for very small children and the second level for more co-ordinated ones.

Action Kids Early Stages

This course provides ideas, activities and music for those adults working with babies and toddlers. Being the Key Person for children in this age group requires lots of energy and creativity and with a busy, often full-time commitment. Practitioners and parents need to be able to understand and call upon child development theories and apply them to practical everyday play in order to give children the very best possible start in life.

This course has been written to support those who work with babies and toddlers. It will expand and support the concepts and requirements expressed in the Development Matters in the Early Years Foundation Stage document through the four components of:-

• A unique child Positive relationships
• Enabling environments Learning and development

Course manual: Action Kids Early Stages. 160 fun activities based on expert knowledge of this age group and of physical development. The CD provides 28 tracks of music to use with practical movement exercises.

Action Kids 162 Parachute Games

At their heart, all parachute games are sensory. They involve touching the parachute silk, moving beneath it or over it, lying beneath the canopy, watching it rise and fall above them. Participants will be introduced to a wide range of games and activities which are great fun to do, widen children’s experiences and give them an opportunity to communicate with others and work in a group.

The course will illustrate the six section of relevant activities which the Parachute Games manual covers.

They are:-

• Section 1. Basic parachute moves and controlling the parachute.
• Section 2. Using the imagination and storytelling.
• Section 3. Action Songs and poems.
• Section 4. Games.
• Section 5. Using small equipment.
• Section 6. Calm down

Course manual: Describes 162 parachute games which can be used with groups of children up to the age of 7 years and beyond! Also includes a CD containing 25 tracks of music which accompany specific parachute activities.

Action Kids After School Clubs

The course will illustrate how Action Kids “After – School Clubs” session plans are specially designed for regular use with Reception and Key Stage 1 groups of children in After-School or Lunch time clubs.

The Physical development play and fun activities are presented in session plans which together form a progressive and developmental programme covering the whole school year. The programme is divided into 3 sections, each containing 15 sessions with core activities leading to gymnastics or games or dance and with parachute games included in all sessions.

Participants will be shown how each section has a core which focuses on one type of activity, but also includes a wide variety of activities from other areas, (e.g. gymnastics sessions contain two or three core activities which develop mobility, strength and suppleness and the remaining activities and games encourage exploration of small equipment, music and parachute games.)

Course manual: Action Kids After School Clubs containing 45 session plans together with 76 tracks of music on 2 CD’s and the Action Kids warm-up and calm-down songs.

Action Kids 88 Music & Movement

This course explores the principles behind effective use of the movement and music cards, reinforces the “layering” principle so all activities are fully inclusive, and develops further the “move, play and learn” philosophy of Action Kids.

Participants will be shown how these activities allow children to develop in unique individual ways and at varying rates, and encourage important development in every area of learning. The bright, appealing cards and the fun activities stimulate language communication and physical activity. Children imagine and recreate stories and experiences, show an understanding of the elements and form of stories, and develop rhythm and co-ordination.

Course manual: A set of 17 user-friendly cards that are bright, colourful and highly illustrated. There are between 4 and 7 main activities on each card, all of which have extensions and an accompanying piece of music. There are 88 main activities and tracks and 104 extensions. There is 1 CD for every 3 cards making a total of 5 CDs in the set.

Activate In The Classroom 5 & 7

This course will familiarise participants with the content and delivery of the progressive and developmental 36-week whole class inclusive Activate In The Classroom programme. It will also provide them with an understanding of the background knowledge and research which has been used to create it.

Activate In The Classroom has demonstrated improvements in children’s fitness, physical fluency, attention and concentration levels and learning abilities when used every day in the classroom for 10 minutes in the morning and 5 in the afternoon.

Course manual: Activate In The Classroom

• Each manual includes 3 programmes: Frogs, Rabbits & Kangaroos. 3 DVDs, one for each programme, which deliver every session in an easy step-by-step format.
• 2 instructional DVDs with an easy access menu for each activity helps everyone master the moves.
• 3 CDs of music - one for each programme. Each of the two age levels covers 2 school years which are development and age-levelled.

Action Kids 600

This practical 1 day course has been designed to develop the practitioner’s knowledge, understanding and skill in delivering well-balanced activity sessions which are designed to progress and develop children’s physical skills and understanding in enjoyable ways. The course will reveal how in each of the activities there are ample opportunities to have fun, explore emotions, and to develop their own ideas.

Course Manual: Action Kids 600

The manual comprises 90 session plans divided into 6 sections:-

1. Spatial awareness development
2. Activities leading to games;
3. activities leading to gymnastics;
4. activities leading to dance;
5. parachute games;
6. responding to sound and music.

2 CDs containing a total of 67 tracks of music written to accompany activities in the manual.

Action Babies and Action Kids Early Stages

This course has been designed to support all those who work with babies and toddlers in a variety of settings – at home, crèches, play schools and nurseries.

Being the key person for children in this age group requires a great deal of energy, commitment and knowledge of child development. From the moment they are born, children need stimulation in order to develop both physically and mentally. Gross and fine motor skills, hand-eye co-ordination, vision development and recognising and locating sounds are essential aspects for which “The Action Babies” manual provides ideas and activities. “Early Stages” develops further a large number of ideas and activities for use with children up to 36 months giving straight forward explanations on the reasons behind the activities and how to utilise and organise them in practical everyday play in order to give children the very best start in life.

A wide range of these ideas and activities are explored throughout the course together with how to use everyday materials creatively.

Course manual: Action Babies – 200 ideas for activities to increase awareness and physical skill of babies from birth to 12 months together with 24 tracks of music. Action Kids Early Stages – 160 fun activities based on expert knowledge of this age group and of physical development, together with CD containing 28 tracks of music.