In Room 5 we begin every school day with some singing and action songs. The children are very enthusiastic and keen to participate. During the songs which involved sitting down, doing actions the children were almost busting out of their seams to get up and dance with their whole bodies. At the end of our session on Thursday I put a piece of modern indian music on and told the children that they could freestyle dance and every child in the room became fully involved in moving around the room in a variety of different ways. At different times in the session I would spotlight the way one person was dancing and ask everyone to dance that way. It was amazing watching the children move from around the room to that one person and copy their actions. The other thing that amazed me was that every single child was fully engaged in the activity, no one removed themselves from the action or stood and watched. At the end of the song I asked the children the question 'What is dancing?' and these were their replies...
Soft, drums, jumping, music, lip syncing, dance sitting, break dancing, singing, hip hop, crawling, jungle music, beautiful, funny body movements, floating, guitars/violins, ballerinas, ballet, cymbals, ribbons, dinosaurs, Kapa Haka, thumping, stomping, spinning, fast, patting, scarves, Jump Jam.
We then talked about what types of dancing would they like to learn and 5 areas were mentioned, Irish, ballet, ribbon, Hip hop and Rock and roll.
Beacause of their enthusiasm and interest we are going to embark on a journey of dance, if you know of any local experts who could come and share a dance or teach some dance to us please let me know.
