Parachutes. Every child loves to sit under and shake these colorful objects. Parachute activities promote physical development and activity, but they can also promote and improve imaginative play, creativity, listening and attention skills, mathematical ideas and concepts, communication and literacy skills, and much more!   

3-2-1: Time for Parachute Fun by Clare Beswick provides numerous parachute activities and play ideas for children ages 3–10. Each activity includes one or more extensions, providing plenty of inspiration to support children’s learning, and most of the activities can be adapted for various developmental stages or for multiage groups. Try these sample activities to get kids moving while they learn to take turns and move rhythmically.

Pond Life

With this activity, children learn:

• To sing and dance
• To begin to move rhythmically
• To listen with enjoyment and respond to stories, songs, rhymes, and poems

What You Need

• Just a parachute

What to Do

1. Spread the parachute flat on the floor and ask the children to sit around the edge of the parachute “pond.”
2. Choose 10 children to be frogs. (If there are fewer than 10 children in your group, change the lyrics to match the number of children.)
3. Sing “Ten Little Speckled Frogs,” with each frog jumping into the pond (over the small ripples that the children holding the parachute are creating).
4. Each time you finish a verse, one child jumps out of the parachute pond and joins the group wafting the parachute. You can play this game with any number of frogs.

Tip: If there are many young children in your group, it may be best to start with three “frogs.”

Other Ideas . . .

• Add some paper fishes to the pond. Say the poem “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Once I Caught a Fish Alive!”
• Choose five children to be little ducks waddling around the pond, and sing and perform the actions of “Five Little Ducks Went Swimming One Day.”
• Make different kinds of waves on the pond. Ask, Can you make a quiet and still pond? Make the waves bigger and bigger, then smaller and smaller. Ask, Can you make huge slow waves and fast smaller ripples?

Follow My Lead

With this activity, children learn:

• To be aware of space, others, and themselves
• To control an object by touching, pushing, patting, throwing, catching, and kicking it
• To interact with others, negotiating activities and taking turns in conversations.

What You Need

• Parachute
• Small stickers (2 colors)
• Soft balls (sponge or fabric)

What to Do

1. Spread the parachute flat on the floor and sit around the edge with the children.
2. Give each child a sticker, alternating the two colors. Ask them to put their stickers on their shirts where they can see them. Ask them to tell you what color stickers they have. Be sure all of the children know which color they are wearing.
3. Stand up together, holding the parachute at about waist height. Throw the balls under the parachute.   
4. Ask all the children with a sticker of one color to let go of the parachute, find a ball, and then come back to their places.
5. Now ask one child to be the leader, and weave in and out of the children who are holding the parachute, ducking under the parachute as necessary. The other children with the same color sticker follow the leader.
6. Play again, calling out the other color so that everyone has a chance to play.
7. Try lots of different actions, perhaps hopping along, crawling, shuffling on bottoms, and so on, both forward and backward.

Other Ideas . . .

• Play again, with the leader changing her actions several times on the way around the circle.
• Play Follow My Lead with balloons, with the leader traveling over and under the parachute with a balloon, perhaps tapping it from hand to hand, perhaps holding it between her elbows, or perhaps with it behind her back.  

Note: Do not overinflate the balloons—it makes them harder to grasp and catch. Collect any burst balloons immediately. They are a potential choking hazard.