Friday, December 9, 2011

"Stretch" with the Preschoolers

This week's story dance class with the preschoolers was super fun. We read Stretch by Doreen Cronin and Scott Menchin (also in book recommendations!).  After our warm-up and snake breaths we get ready for the story. I pass out the story squares and as I do, the children name all the colors. Then I review the book cover with them. The first story dance group made spontaneous predictions about what animals they thought would be in the story. It was great. Sadly, the crocodile one child predicted did not appear in the story, but he did not seem disappointed by the giraffe, whale, leopard, and kitten who did.

A page from "Stretch."

After the story, I put on some mid-tempo music and led the group in a story square stretch. I ask them to hold the squares with two hands and stretch the square up, to each side, lunging, we stretched them out front and behind, we shined our shoes with them. Next, I collected the squares and asked the children to sit down for I was bringing out my faithful sidekick - Mr.Tambourine. I went around the circle and had each student tap Mr. Tambourine with their toes. This was a really cute exercise that they all seemed to get a kick out of- ha! I think some of them may have thought the notion of being asked to kick the tambourine with their feet was absolutely absurd.  It is a funny idea considering if they were to go around kicking tambourines, that would definitely not be ok.

It is ok, however, in a structured class as this. The tambourine provided them a focal point to aim, stretch, and tap. The tambourine was a target, and when they toe-tapped the target, they created a really cool sound. This invites an auditory experience along with the kinetic and I like multi-model, or inter-model, experiences in the learning process. This type of exercise is beneficial for developing self-awareness by exploring their bodies in space - My body ends here, CLANG! (or whatever sound it makes). It also helps to develop self-awareness through force; when the student kicks lightly, one kind of sound occurs. When they kick hard, another and more startling sound occurs. This is very valuable information for the developing brain.

My tambourine is also super durable and I use it regularly when teaching dance, movement, and drama, so I wasn't worried about them kicking it.


For our dance party, I passed out the dance scarves and encouraged students to use the scarves in different ways, incorporate some of the stretch  moves we had previously done, and - the best part - throw the scarves up in the air! For this part of class, I put on Groove Armada's If Everybody Looked the Same from the album Vertigo. This song is really up-beat and has a funky groove that they can all get down to. The only lyric in the song is, "If everybody looked the same, we'd get tired of looking at each other." I believe this is a great message in general and totally coincides with my teaching philosophies of acceptance/tolerance/and celebrating diversity. From my years of doing this, I have also learned that little kids really love disco. This song is not disco necessarily, but this song has similar elements that the kids like to boogie down to. After all, we can't listen to Stayin' Alive every week!

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