Polar Bear Cubs

For today's story dance class, we explored polar bear movement using fabric and a movement cube. We did our usual warm-up and then, instead of passing out the story squares, I laid out blue and white fabric and tulle. The children snuggled up on the "snow and ice" as we read My Little Polar Bear by Claudia Rueda. The story is simple and sweet. It is guided by the cub's curiosity to his mother about being a polar bear and we get to find out what polar bears like to do.

These same and other cub movements are reflected on my polar bear movement cube. This was constructed from a cube shaped tissue box, construction paper, and six polar bear movements I got from the Clifford magazine by Scholastic. I covered the tissue box with blue construction paper, then put a polar bear cub movement photograph with simple text, on each side. Each movement is labeled with a number and a sentence with a key word in it.

We reviewed each of the six movements then started the game. Each student took a turn to roll the cube into the "snow and ice," which I placed in the center of our circle. We acted out the movements each person rolled. Then I removed the fabric and let students explore these movements in free space as I narrated. I ended this guided imagery with everyone "curled" up (movement #6) and covered them with the fabric. This was their delight! Children love fabric, it can become anything. The children enjoyed playing under the fabric and acting like polar bear cubs in the snow. It was great.

Next, students lined-up for polar bear jumps. The white fabric acted as the snow pile, students jumped over it one at a time to the Nutcracker while I hit the tambourine.

Today's book invited a great movement class. I was looking for a winter or snow themed book when I came across the polar bear book and it all came together. I remembered I had a polar bear movement cube and when I couldn't find it - I made another one!

Movement cubes are great classroom tools. You can make them about anything and connect language and movement to pretty much any theme, you just need to get a little creative.