Magic Wands

Magic wands are extremely helpful when teaching young children. You can also use magic bells... magic anything really. And the best part about them, is that they work! For my creative movement preschool program, I use an earth bell and refer to it as the magic bell. When I ring it, everything freezes.  Silent signals are extremely useful with this age group and all age groups really. Calling it magic is what gives it its power. The children make it work.

I start each creative movement class in a circle. I do a check-in at every circle to help students get focused and prepared for the class which requires a lot of listening and following directions. During this check-in, I look at each student directly making eye contact with them, then I roll them a ball. The rule is only the person with the ball can talk. I ask everyone the same question, and they roll the ball back to me after they answer. For initial groups this exercise also helps me learn everyone's name. In later groups, I may ask questions like what is your favorite color?food? After the check-in, I bring out magic bell. I ask the students to help me check if magic bell is working today. If magic bell is working, then we can have class. If magic bell is not working, we cannot have class. I ask everyone to wiggle and shake (they love this). When I hit magic bell, they freeze.

With one group, students were getting a bit over excited with the movement activity, this is what magic bell is for - behavior management. I ring the bell so that everyone will freeze; but on this day, they keep going. I rang it again, but the children still did not freeze. Then, I turned off the music and said, "Oh no! Magic bell is broken! We have to end class." The children look stunned and disappointed. I ask them, "should we try magic bell one more time?" They say yes. Then, like I check at the beginning of class, I ask them to wiggle and shake, I ring the bell, and they freeze. We have not had any issues with magic bell not working in this class since.


I also used magic wands in my preschool creative movement class for our Nutcracker inspired classes. We galloped pretending we were reindeer pulling a sleigh to the Sugar Plum Fairy's palace follow-the-leader style. I led the students all around the space eventually ending the exercise with everyone sitting on the mats facing the dance space. For this performance score, some children pretend to be the "honored guests" while students take turns being the various dancers from the Land of the Sweets. I pass out magic wands (straws with sparkly ribbon coming out held together with a staple covered by big sparkly snowflake foam stickers). The dancers were given a palate of twirling, sliding, and pointing for the Sugar Plum Fairy dance. I demonstrated the dance moves they could play with and turned on the music; then one of students (four years) said, "It's light and airy." Yes it is! What I also love about the magic wands is that there is no gender preference; boys and girls in all three classes were equally excited and expressive with them as well as with scarves as the Arabian dancers.

The next class after this one was their final class of the eight week creative movement program. When I rolled the ball to each student at the start of class, I asked them to tell me a dance, game, or exercise, anything we have done in class, that they would like to do. They would be designing the final class.

All three classes asked for the wands and the Red Carpet game. What great feedback.