Follow the Leader

Follow the Leader by Erica Silverman is the story of two brothers who play follow the leader.  They do all kinds of activities and use their imaginations to fly, swim, climb, and more!  This book is a whole class in itself.  I love to use it for dance or gymnastics birthday parties, and as a fun class towards the beginning of each semester.  All you have to do is read the book and it will tell you what to do!  The teacher pretends to be the older brother.

Activities follow in this order:

p. 2 Students follow you walking, then hopping, skipping, then stop! (Freeze)

p. 3 Students follow you trotting (galloping), frog jumping, and “leap like a rabbit” over something in the room (a cone, rolled up yoga mat, climb over a gymnastics mat, etc.)

p. 4 Run with wings (arms) outstretched, swoop in a circle, and land (freeze down low).

p. 5 Do handstands if age-appropriate.  If not, I sometimes change the words to “Turn upside down, and put your hands on the ground”

p. 6 “Run around in a loop.  Somersault backwards.  Now hula a hoop!”  We follow instructions precisely. 🙂

p. 8 “Close your eyes tight.  Arms out!  Spin around! Reach for the sky.  Drop to the ground.”  Keep following instructions.  Just make sure you spread out the students before they spin with arms out and eyes closed!!!

p. 9 I usually use a pop-up tunnel.  But I have also used folding gymnastics mats to make a tunnel, and we have crawled underneath chair legs for tunnels!

p. 10 Grab some instruments (homemade maracas, dollar store tamborines, wooden spoons and boxes, etc.) and march in a parade.  Take turns being the leader.

p. 11-12 Walk across an aerobics step, balance beam, or other stable “ledge”.  If unavailable, put a line of masking tape on the ground to tip-toe across.

p. 13 If they are old enough, we’ll play some catch with balls.  If I feel like this will be super disruptive, I’ll just skip this page!

p. 14-15 Grab a blue scarf and go “swimming” throughout the room.  This is also a good time for The Goldfish Song.

p. 16-17 If you have bars, this is a good time to go swing under the bars.  If not, just skip this page.

p. 19 Slide down a wedge mat, slide on your belly across several exercise balls, or push with your hands to slide backwards on your belly on the floor.

p. 22 FREEZE!  Don’t move.

p. 26-28 Let students take turns being the leader.  If the class is too big for everyone to get a turn, you can divide into partnerships and have each partner take turns leading the other.

Have fun!  Did you get other ideas when reading this book???