How these work
Open a routine and press start. Golu calls one action out loud, waits about twelve seconds, then calls the next. There is no video to copy and nothing to watch — your child should be looking at the room, not the screen. That is deliberate: a movement video keeps a child's eyes on a rectangle, while a voice sets them free to move.
What is on this page
2 animal walks, 3 stretches, 7 movement games including freeze dance and red light green light, 5 action rhymes, 4 balance challenges, and 3 slow routines for bringing a wound-up child back down. Every routine takes two to three minutes and needs nothing but floor space.
Why a learning site has a movement page
Gross motor comes before fine motor. The shoulder and core strength a child builds by crawling, climbing and hanging is what later lets them sit upright at a table and control a pencil — which is why so much handwriting difficulty turns out to be a strength problem rather than a writing problem. Movement also does something more immediate: a child who has moved sits still for longer afterwards, and a child who is climbing the walls is not being naughty, they are telling you something true about their body.
How much a small child needs
The usual guidance is about three hours of physical activity spread through the day for a three- to five-year-old, of which around an hour should be the energetic kind, and not more than an hour at a stretch sitting still while awake. That is a lot, and no screen can supply it. These routines are for the gaps: the rainy afternoon, the small flat, the twenty minutes before dinner when everything is falling apart.
The freeze games do something extra
Freeze dance, red light green light and slow motion look like fun and are actually training for self-control. Stopping a moving body on command uses exactly the machinery a child needs to stop a hand before it snatches or a voice before it shouts, and unlike a lecture about sharing, it is a game they will ask for again. Researchers call these executive-function games; children call them the good ones.
They are part of the daily plan
Every day in Golu's Day has a "move" step between the games and the making, so your child meets one of these without having to choose it. If a routine is a hit, it is worth doing the same one every day for a week — repetition is how a movement stops being difficult and starts being theirs.
Now do it for real
When the screen goes off, do something with your hands. Try 🔍 Secret lemon writing — an easy science experiment for ages 5-6, with every step read aloud in your language. You will need lemon juice and a cotton bud, white paper, a warm iron or a sunny window (grown-up); nothing that needs a trip to a shop.
There are 56 more on the things to do at home page, and free printable worksheets if you would rather have something on paper. Ten minutes on a screen and twenty minutes off it is a good shape for a day at this age.