This book is so easy to dance to. It’s one of those books that has a million possibilities! I love to use it with my creative movement and mommy and me classes (ages 1-5). This book goes through several different shapes: rectangle, square, circle, oval, etc., and lists all the ways Skippyjon Jones moves around/through/with those shapes. I created a printout of each shape listed in the book. Grab the printable here! Then, I hung those shapes around the room. After reading through the book and doing a few movements that we felt inspired to do by the book, we took turns picking a shape off of the wall. Then, we did a dancing activity for each shape. Check out the list of activities below.
Get your own copy of Skippyjon Jones shape up here.
Circle: Run in a circle! Hold hands and make a circle. Chasse in a circle while holding hands. Run in a circle while holding hands. Sit down in the circle and go through your usual stretching routine.
Square: Skippyjon salsas on the square. A salsa step looks like this. Can you do it? In salsa you must move your hips. Can you move your hips in a big circle? Can you shake them? Can you move your hips in slow motion? How else can you move your hips?
Triangle: Pick a balancing shape and freeze. Skippyjon was teetering. Teetering means to hold your balance as hard as you can, even if you feel like you’re falling. Can you hold your frozen shape so hard? Let’s go teetering across the balance beam (or across a tape line)!
Oval: Skippyjon orbited an oval. To orbit means to go around. Can you dance around the chair/box/stick/mat/etc. in the middle of the room? Can you spin around it? Kick around it? Can you jump around it?
Stars: Reach as high as you can for the stars. Can you reach higher? I know a song about a star. It’s called Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Do you know it? Will you sing it with me? While we sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, we do a “dance” to it based on the traditional motions. Twinkle (Lean left and twinkle your fingers) , Twinkle (Lean right and twinkle your fingers) Little star (Squat down into a tiny ball, then explode up into a star jump). How I wonder (arms out and shrug your shoulders) what you are (cross your feet and turn around). Up above the world so high (reach as high as you can), Like a diamond in the sky (make a diamond with your fingers and arc your diamond fingers overhead). Twinkle (Lean left and twinkle your fingers) , Twinkle (Lean right and twinkle your fingers) Little star (Squat down into a tiny ball, then explode up into a star jump). How I wonder (arms out and shrug your shoulders) what you are (cross your feet and turn around).
Crescent: Skippyjon Jones rocked the crescent. Can you sit down in tuck position and rock and roll? (Hold your knees in to your chest and roll back onto your back, then forward back to sitting). A crescent shape is like the moon. When the moon comes out, it’s dark outside. Let’s dance in the dark! (Turn off the lights and get out your flashlights! The flashlights I use are in this post). OR, when it’s dark outside, it’s time to go to sleep. Let’s dance to this song about going to sleep: Late Last Night or The Goldfish Song.
Heart: Skippyjon Jones tugs at your heart! Sometimes we’ll do a tug of war for this. Or, we’ll do turns with our hands on our hearts. Or, we’ll do a “reverence” from ballet, because that means thank you from my heart. Or we might sit on my heart blanket and read a story. Or we might notice that Skippyjon Jones has a heart shaped balloon in the book and play The Balloon Game!
Two Rectangles: Skippyjon jones pumps two rectangles to get super strong. Can you do push-ups with me to get really strong arms?
Diamond: Do you remember a song we sang that had the word “diamond” in it? (Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star). Let’s do it one more time! OR, Skippyjon Jones balances a diamond on his nose. Can you balance this bean bag on your nose? Can you balance it on your shoulder? On your head?
Octagon: Skippyjon Jones STOPPED at the octagon stop sign. Let’s play freeze dance. When the music stops, make sure you STOP, too!
Have fun dancing shapes with Skippyjon Jones Shape Up!
by Kevin Henkes has great illustrations and a lot of movement evoking words! It’s a great book for dance class. The illustrations are just awesome! Here’s what I do when we read this book in class:
. I set up cones down the middle of the room (you could also do small mats, dance spots, a tape line, etc.). On one side of the line is “little land”. When you dance on this side of the cones, show me how small you can be, like a tiny hummingbird. How little can you move? If you’d like to cross the cones do a one foot hop (or step of the cat, leap, tuck jump, etc.) to go to the other side. On the other side of the cones is big land! Over here, move as big as you can,like the big pink flamingo! Remember, if you want to cross to the other side, do a one foot hop over the cones!
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Cut it into sections about 3 feet long. Give a ribbon to each child and go dancing! We especially like to toss and catch with these ribbons because they fall so slowly. We talk about floating in the air a lot with these. We also practice spinning, leaping, and jumping with our ribbons. We make rainbows over our heads. Sometimes, I’ll turn on windy music and these become our “wind scarves”. We’ll run around the room making a tornado with them, then get sucked up into the tornado and spin as quickly as we can. Possibilities are endless here.
We also use fuzzy dice like balls, tossing and catching, rolling, balancing on our heads, balancing on our feet, and deciding the number of times to do an activity or step. Kids get so excited about fuzzy dice, that I believe the investment to get a dozen fuzzy dice (instead of regular small and hard dice) is worth it!
