My students and I love to “head to the beach” during dance class! So, I put together a summer dance day for ages 2-6. The class is 2 hours long, and it is jam packed! Here’s what we do (insert bathroom breaks, snack breaks, and water breaks when needed)!
First, we do our Under the Sea dance class (find the details here).
Next we make these awesome glitter starfish!
Cut out enough orange stars for everyone. Let each student color their stars. Then have them put glue on their stars. Sprinkle glitter all over the star and then tap it off. The glitter will stick where the glue is. Then, have them dip cheerios in glue and add them to the top. Finally, glue the star onto a blue piece of paper. We like to hang our artwork on the walls while they dry!
While the starfish are drying, we’ll practice our movement rhyme (find out about movement rhymes here) that we will perform for parents at the end. Here are the words:
Run, run, run, JUMP! Turn around.
Reach up high, then dive right down!
Wiggle like an octopus. Dolphin dive.
Hide like a clownfish. Reach up high.
Swim down low where it’s very dark.
Run, run, leap! Away from that shark!
Spin and spin. Do a seahorse prance.
Now show me an ocean dance!
*When in doubt, mime the words. And for the last line, grab a blue ribbon and let the dancers dance in their own way.
Next, we do a beach-themed stretch. First, hold hands make a circle. Sit down and “glue” the bottoms of your feet together (to sit in butterfly position). Flap your butterfly wings all the way to the beach. Then land (stop flapping). Scoop up lots of sand into a pile in front of your feet. Pantomime creating a sandcastle. Reach all around you to find the perfect sea shells to decorate your sand castle. Then, stand up and JUMP to smash your sandcastle.
Sit back down and review tuck and pick positions. Then, make a “sand”wich. Sit in pike position and spread “sand” all over your legs. Then put imaginary seaweed in your hair and shells all over your chest and stomach. Smash your sandwich together (reach for your toes). The teacher can go around and “eat up” all the delicious sandwiches while they stretch.
Then, clap your arms together above your head and make a sandwich knife. Chop your sandwich in half (between the legs), and move into straddle position. Eat up each half of your sandwich (stretching sideways toward each legs). Then, scoop up the crumbs left in the middle and throw them back into the ocean.
Finally, lay down and make a sand angel. Roll over and do seal stretch (cobra).
Then we take a quick break for bathrooms and snack time. And students can color these coloring pages if they want!
Now, it’s time for The Goldfish Song (details here)!
Then, we practice our movement rhyme for parents again. And, depending on time, we might read this book:
Or this book:
Then, we’ll practice our dance for parents one more time! And, while we wait for them to arrive to watch our “show”, we do this last craft (which I welcome parent assistance with)!
For the Ocean Bottle Craft you need:
a small water bottle (1/2 full of water)
clear vegetable or mineral oil
blue food coloring
glitter or confetti
small shells or toys that float
stickers to decorate with
funnel
First, put one drop of blue food coloring in the 1/2 full water bottle. Then, add glitter, confetti, shells, or toys. Next, fill to the top with oil. Glue the lid on the inside and around the outside with hot glue to keep the lid on permanently! Then decorate the outside with ocean stickers. The kids can help with each step of this, as long as no bottles get knocked over!!! And they are fun to turn and watch the waves inside your bottle as the fish toys and glitter float on top of the water but under the oil!
Last thing to do is PERFORM for the parents. Show off that movement rhyme and ribbon dance! And, then, invite them to come back for more summertime fun or fall classes.
by Kevin Henkes has great illustrations and a lot of movement evoking words! It’s a great book for dance class. The illustrations are just awesome! Here’s what I do when we read this book in class:
. I set up cones down the middle of the room (you could also do small mats, dance spots, a tape line, etc.). On one side of the line is “little land”. When you dance on this side of the cones, show me how small you can be, like a tiny hummingbird. How little can you move? If you’d like to cross the cones do a one foot hop (or step of the cat, leap, tuck jump, etc.) to go to the other side. On the other side of the cones is big land! Over here, move as big as you can,like the big pink flamingo! Remember, if you want to cross to the other side, do a one foot hop over the cones!
).
Cut it into sections about 3 feet long. Give a ribbon to each child and go dancing! We especially like to toss and catch with these ribbons because they fall so slowly. We talk about floating in the air a lot with these. We also practice spinning, leaping, and jumping with our ribbons. We make rainbows over our heads. Sometimes, I’ll turn on windy music and these become our “wind scarves”. We’ll run around the room making a tornado with them, then get sucked up into the tornado and spin as quickly as we can. Possibilities are endless here.
We also use fuzzy dice like balls, tossing and catching, rolling, balancing on our heads, balancing on our feet, and deciding the number of times to do an activity or step. Kids get so excited about fuzzy dice, that I believe the investment to get a dozen fuzzy dice (instead of regular small and hard dice) is worth it!
