Thanks for Thanksgiving

This week's preschool story dance class was about being thankful, but it almost wasn't. I had actually planned to do "Peaceful Piggies" since we did not have class last week. Then I realized that this was their last class with me before the holiday. I did not have a thanksgiving book in my stash, so I decided to visit Ms. Melanie. I knew she would have some good books on this very theme, and she did! On her book shelf was Thanks for Thanksgiving by Julie Markes.

I am thankful for Ms. Melanie!

Each story dance class begins with the snake breath. This helps get the kids to quiet their bodies while being active and engaged. Letting out the S sound requires them to exert some energy and there is only so loud one can get while making it. It also catches on quickly. If the group is getting too noisy or losing focus, I start the S sound and everyone joins-in pretty quickly.  The "Snake Breath" is new to my classroom management repertoire and is proving to be a reliable tool.

Then I introduced Ms. Melanie's book. The author talks about being thankful from a child's perspective. She describes being thankful for swings, slides, play-dates, kittens, puppies, school, mommies, and daddies. When we read each page, I asked the students to do a "thumbs-up" if they were thankful for those things too. This book was nice for the preschoolers because the sentences were not too long and the language was accessible to their lives. The illustrations were detailed and colorful, filling-up every page.

After the story,  I used a ball from the classroom to lead a sharing circle. I make eye contact with each student and ask them the same question. Today's question was what are you thankful for? Whoever I roll the ball to answers the question. I heard lots of mommies and daddies, brothers and sisters, nannies and poppies and, of course, toys! Since this is story dance class, after each student answered the question, they got a turn in the middle to dance on the leaves to the tambourine. Oh yes - the author was also thankful for fall leaves, so that worked out nice.

I transitioned the children to the yoga dance party by revisiting yoga poses from previous classes. I had displayed a few yoga cards for visual assistance. A very adorable moment occurred when one of the little one's took notice of the cards and totally lit-up. I could not help but smile at his reaction. He got very excited and started recalling other poses from the book we had read last time.  After reviewing the cards and poses, I called them-up to turn-in their story squares by color. I also turned each color group into either "mountains" "trees" "triangles" and "twisty pretzels." Then we had a yoga dance party.

I am thankful for my colleagues, my students, my family, and friends.

Happy Thanksgiving!