Teaching dance classes with books is one of my favorite pastimes. I love how a story can motivate movement in children! The Rainbow Fish
- Show pictures of several sea creatures and talk about how they might move (for the printable visuals, click here)
.
- Fish: Wiggle your head
- Octopus: Wiggle your arms and legs
- Crab/Lobster: Tiny and sharp steps
- Sea Turtle: Slow, sustained/smooth movement
2. Turn on music and guide the children through an improvisation of how these sea creatures move.
3. Read aloud Marcus Pfister’s The Rainbow Fish
4. We all have bodies to dance with and we are going to create a dance that we can share with our teacher, and if you remember, you can share it with your mom or dad when you get home. Assign the children into two groups: either one’s or two’s. All of the one’s go out into the space and make a sea animal shape (any frozen shape will do). All the two’s, when I say go, dance into the space quick and sharp like a crab and then make a different sea animal shape. Alternate one’s and two’s using the various sea animals we learned.
5. Place several mats around the room. These will represent the islands in the sea. When I turn on the music, everyone will dance around the room without touching the mats, wiggling your arms and legs like an octopus. When the music stops, you must freeze in an octopus shape and be touching a mat. (Repeat with other sea animals). More than one child may touch a mat. As you repeat, the instructor can be the “evil eel” and take away two or three mats each time until there are only a few left.
6. Have children do a Good-bye dance. Line up on one end of the space and, while playing music, have each child one by one dance across the room, practicing what they can share with their parents about how sea animals move.
And if you’ve got extra time, enjoy these printable Rainbow Fish coloring pages!
Thank you Erika, great resource!
What music would you suggest with this lesson?
I just wanted to say how much I love your ideas!! I teach a 40 minute Mommy & Me dance class for ages 18-3 years. In the beginning I struggled with what to do. After checking out your website I was overwhelmed with ideas. I wanted to share a few extras that I added to what you have, to stretch the class out a little.
This week we did Rainbow Fish.
-I took your advice and we went through creatures of the sea, discussing how they move. I used stuffed animals and puppets as visuals, and we practiced dancing like they might dance.
-I read the story, and as you suggested, we wiggled like a fish every time we heard that word.
– We sang and danced to the Goldfish song (that you posted in another lesson), using some rainbow ribbon.
– Because my kiddos tend to cling to mom/grandma, I didn’t think them coming up with a dance would go over very well. So I printed out some different colored fish and laminated them. We used those to play three games. 1. Freeze dance – Dance while the music is on. Freeze on a specific colored fish when the music stops. 2. Leap Fish – We lined the fish up in a row about 2 feet apart. We practiced running and leaping over them as we listened to some upbeat classical music. 3. Clean up – To the tune of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” I sang “Twirling twirling all around the sea, find all the blue fish and bring them to me.” As they brought the fish, I had a fishbowl for them to place the fish in. The next time I changed it up “Skipping skipping all around the sea, find all the red fish and bring them to me.”
– At the end of class we danced to Baby Shark, and passed out pretty fish stickers as a reward.
With our warm up stretches in the beginning, all of this took up the whole 40 minutes. Thank you so much for all of your wonderful ideas!
Oh I love all your visuals! How fun!!!! Mommy and Me can definitely be intimidating, but you did awesome!