First Class

Today I led my first groups integrating the props into The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams. My first group was 18 kindergarteners, a pretty big group. After doing our snake breath and warm-up,  I passed out the story squares and all the props. I was short two. In an instant, I had to turn this moment into something amazing or else things could turn very badly very quickly. Aha! They are going to start the story.

I walked them away from the group of students sitting on their story squares with their props in hand. They would start the story by tagging the students who have the baskets (they were they old ladies). The story opens on a windy day, so my story starters turned into the wind and blew themselves over to the group and tagged the next two students in the story. In the story, the old lady gathers spices and herbs; these students acted this out in the center of the group. Then, they tagged the students with shoes, then those students tagged the students with the shirts, and so on until everyone had a turn.

It worked!

Nobody got upset about not having a prop - phew! This is a moment that could have gone so horribly wrong."Story Tag" happened as a response to a possible child meltdown that instead became the spark for the rest of the class.

The next group to come in was the pre-k and they are a much smaller group. They sat in more of a semi-circle to me which I think works better for using the props. These students came right up on their turns, made their props dance as well as danced themselves, and were visible by everyone and everyone could still see the book. The kindergarteners sat in a circle. Dancing and moving inside the circle got crowded at times, and made the book hard to see for students in the outer circle. None of them seemed to mind, but I will try the semi-circle method with them next time I do props.

After we did the story, I ended each class with a monster mash dance party. I played them the old tune by Bobby "Boris" Pickett & the Crypt-Kickers. The best spontaneous thing that happened was when the kindergarteners formed their own conga line and made it go around in a circle. Pretty awesome. I thought that was great. When the pre-k kids attended their monster mash party, they did not make a conga line, but they sure had a lot of great monster moves.

Today was a really fun first time trying something new. Next time, preschoolers...