studio dance

Harold and the Purple Crayon

January 18, 2016 by Erika Leave a Comment

Harold and the Purple Crayon (Purple Crayon Books) is one of those beloved classics. You’ve read it, your parents have read it, and maybe your grandparents, too! But even though it’s old, my students still love this one!

After our warm-up, across the floor, movement rhymes, and stretching, we’ll move to the theme of class. Today’s theme is: Harold and the Purple Crayon (Purple Crayon Books)

Read Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson. When I get to each of the below sections in the book, we stop and do the activity. Then we come back to the book.

Long straight path: do a dance on a long straight path. (Run, run, jump! Run, run leap!) Sometimes, we’ll also make up our own dance along a masking tape line on the floor.
Turned a corner shortcut: On a tape square made on the floor (about 6 feet on each side), each child will do “run, run, run, jump, turn around, reach up high and touch the ground” on one side. Then, turn the corner to the next side and “kick your feet, clap to the beat, run, run, run, run giant leap”.
Backed away (from dragon): Shake away from the book. Run backwards. Skip backwards. Shake backwards.
From the top of the mountain: Climb up a wedge mat and jump off. Practice straddle jumps and tuck jumps.
Falling in thin air: Collapse. Combination: 4x march, 3x turn, 2x jump, collapse
Landing the balloon: Blow up a balloon and watch it fly down, down, down. Turn on music and do a balloon falling dance. Everyone start up high and gradually move lower and lower.
He got in bed and drew up the covers: Dance to Late Last Night by Joe Scruggs.

Choreograph and Share (5 minutes)

Harold used his crayon to draw his own adventure. Today we’re going to use our squiggles (ribbons) to draw our own adventure. Let’s write the alphabet with our squiggles. Sing the ABCs song with me!

Can you paint a picture with your squiggle? Can you write your name? Or draw a flower? Maybe you can make a dinosaur! How can you dance with your feet while you draw your picture in the air?

Closure (2 minutes)

Share your squiggle dance with a partner, or with the class, as time allows.

Follow the Leader

January 18, 2016 by Erika Leave a Comment

Follow the Leader by Erica Silverman is the story of two brothers who play follow the leader. They do all kinds of activities and use their imaginations to fly, swim, climb, and more! This book is a whole class in itself. I love to use it for dance or gymnastics birthday parties, and as a fun class towards the beginning of each semester. All you have to do is read the book and it will tell you what to do! The teacher pretends to be the older brother.

Activities follow in this order:

p. 2 Students follow you walking, then hopping, skipping, then stop! (Freeze)

p. 3 Students follow you trotting (galloping), frog jumping, and “leap like a rabbit” over something in the room (a cone, rolled up yoga mat, climb over a gymnastics mat, etc.)

p. 4 Run with wings (arms) outstretched, swoop in a circle, and land (freeze down low).

p. 5 Do handstands if age-appropriate. If not, I sometimes change the words to “Turn upside down, and put your hands on the ground”

p. 6 “Run around in a loop. Somersault backwards. Now hula a hoop!” We follow instructions precisely. 🙂

p. 8 “Close your eyes tight. Arms out! Spin around! Reach for the sky. Drop to the ground.” Keep following instructions. Just make sure you spread out the students before they spin with arms out and eyes closed!!!

p. 9 I usually use a pop-up tunnel. But I have also used folding gymnastics mats to make a tunnel, and we have crawled underneath chair legs for tunnels!

p. 10 Grab some instruments (homemade maracas, dollar store tamborines, wooden spoons and boxes, etc.) and march in a parade. Take turns being the leader.

p. 11-12 Walk across an aerobics step, balance beam, or other stable “ledge”. If unavailable, put a line of masking tape on the ground to tip-toe across.

p. 13 If they are old enough, we’ll play some catch with balls. If I feel like this will be super disruptive, I’ll just skip this page!

p. 14-15 Grab a blue scarf and go “swimming” throughout the room. This is also a good time for The Goldfish Song.

p. 16-17 If you have bars, this is a good time to go swing under the bars. If not, just skip this page.

p. 19 Slide down a wedge mat, slide on your belly across several exercise balls, or push with your hands to slide backwards on your belly on the floor.

p. 22 FREEZE! Don’t move.

p. 26-28 Let students take turns being the leader. If the class is too big for everyone to get a turn, you can divide into partnerships and have each partner take turns leading the other.

Have fun! Did you get other ideas when reading this book???

Hilda Must Be Dancing

January 14, 2016 by Erika Leave a Comment

Book lesson plans are some of my very favorites. There’s no hanging up visual aids, you get to have a little downtime during class, and the students get really inspired by stories. When I teach using this book, I’ll start with a warm-up and across the floor section. We may do a movement rhyme or some stretching. Then we settle in for the content of class: Hilda Must Be Dancing.

Hippos live in the jungle. What are some things that grow in the jungle?

vines: twist

flowers: grow from compact to expansive

trees: slow growth from low to high

venus fly traps: quickly compress your shape to catch a fly

Read Hilda Must Be Dancing, and as you read, do the movements as listed:

Read the first 2 pages: Can you twist and turn like Hilda? Twist one body part. Twist another. Turn your head. Turn your whole body. Show me all the twisting and turning ways you can move!

2. Read the next 4 pages: Make loud, thumpity bump noises with your feet. Can you make thumpity bump noises with other body parts?

When movements are loud, they are usually big. Show me big movements that look loud, but are actually silent (big, dynamic, etc.).

Next, the ground shook. Explore shaking different body parts.

Stomp and shake game: One person stomps and if it’s a big stomp then the rest of the class shakes big. If it’s a little stomp, do tiny shakes. Switch out who gets to stomp and who shakes.

3. Read the next page: The bananas fell from their peels. Explore collapsing like the bananas. First, practice with your hand, then stand, spread out, and collapse your whole body.

Next, move ooey, gooey (sustained, smooth, etc.) on the floor, back to the book.

4. Read the next four pages: Monkeys were hanging and swinging. Try swing your arm back and forth. Can you swing your whole body? What other body parts can you hang and swing like the monkeys? Collapse, ooey gooey back to clump.

5. Read the next six pages: How would a hippo skip? Skip to a place in the room.

6. Finish the book: How can you dance like Hilda does in the water? Can you move smoothly and quietly? Show me how graceful and smooth you can make your movement.

Finally, create a dance as a class with your favorite movements from the book. For example, start in the middle and move all ooey gooey, then hippo skip to a new spot. Shake your favorite body part and move big but silent back to the clump.

Get creative, and have fun!

Chicken in a Hen House

January 12, 2016 by Erika 1 Comment

Okay, so this post has absolutely nothing to do with real chickens. And I don’t know why the game is named Chicken in a Hen House. But, these are the directions to Chicken in a Hen House, a fun and fast-paced game introduced to me by my college professor, Kori Wakamatsu. I’ve played it with great success with ages 7-30. I haven’t tried it with anyone older, but I think it’d work. 😉 Obviously, if the students are pretty young, don’t use the weight bearing shapes or modify as needed.

Divide the students in to partnerships where they are roughly the same size, then teach them the following partner, weight-bearing shapes:

Chicken in a Hen House: Partner A goes down to the ground on hands and knees. Partner B crouches on Partner A’s back, placing their knees over the hips and hands over the shoulder blades.

Bridge over Water: Partner A lays down, face up. Partner B makes a bridge over Partner A by doing downward facing dog.

Fire Fighter: Partner A picks up Partner B in a cradle carry (Best for older students). OR Partner A pretends to pick up Partner B while Partner B leaves one foot on the ground.

Piggy Back: Partner A picks up Partner B just like a piggy back ride. OR Partner A crouches down low and Partner B places hands on Partner A’s shoulders without Partner A actually lifting them

Teepee: Partners A and B face each other, lift their hands above their heads and lean in so that their palms press against each other, creating a triangle, or teepee, shape with the ground.

Tug of War: Partners A and B face each other and grasp hands, leaning away from each other and pulling.

Sailor: Partner A kneels on the ground with one knee down and one knee propped up to the side. Partner B sits on Partner A’s knee. Partner A salutes.

Chain: Both partners cross their arms and kneel with one knee down, facing each other. They then hold each other’s hands.

Airplane: Partner A stands with arms out to each side like airplane wings and back leg up in arabesque. Partner B holds Partner A’s leg up.

All the partner A’s make a circle. All the partner B’s make a circle around the partner A’s circle. Turn on the music. As the music is playing, partners A and B walk in their separate, concentric circles in opposite directions (all A’s walk clockwise, all B’s walk counter-clockwise). When the music stops, the instructor calls out one of the above listed shapes. Each partnership must find each other and make the shape as quickly as possible. The last partnership to do so is out. If a partnership falls out of their shape, they could also be called out, depending on how quickly they get back into the shape.

Sometimes we play for “outs”. Sometimes, we just play for fun!

Also, often I instruct the students to each make their own partner shape, and we’ll add some in to make the game harder!

The Goldfish Song

January 12, 2016 by Erika 1 Comment

Oh goldfish. If I had a pet, it would be you. I never knew how much I loved goldfish until this song was shared with me by a dear, dear friend. Then I realized, I had goldfish as centerpieces at my wedding (It was cool…really…), orange is my favorite color, and my favorite song is The Goldfish Song by Laurie Berkner. Apparently, it was meant to be. This song is a lot like Late Last Night, which I posted about here. It’s a time filler song, and my students ask for it again and again and again. Some weeks, my goal is to get through class without doing the goldfish song, haha! Here is how we do it:

All students lay on the ground for the beginning of the song. They each get one blue ribbon or scarf to dance with.

FIRST VERSE

“They lifted up their heads”: Lift up your heads.

“And they shook out their tails”: Shake out your tail.

“Let’s go swimming”: Dance throughout the room with your ribbon. Skip, turn, jump, etc.

“Got so very, very tired”: Lay back down.

“When they woke up”: Lift up your heads and wake up!

“Take a shower”: Wash body parts as they are named (hair, ears, tummies, beards, noes, toes)

“Wait a minute!”: Stand hands on hips.

“We’re fish!”: Thumbs to chest.

“We don’t take showers!”: Shake finger like you’re admonishing someone.

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