Book WeekDance in SchoolsEducating DanceBook Week 2022 – 3

My week started off at Halling Primary School with the book ‘Alien’s Love Underpants’ with Year 1. The children learnt a short dance based on Aliens and their shapes and features before creating their own Alien. Lots of Alien’s were made with various numbers of arms and legs and the children linked themselves together before finding different ways of making their Alien’s move. The children used lots of different levels and pathways to create their own unique ways of moving.

We also used different coloured scarfs to imagine we were decorating our own underpants thinking about the different colours and shapes from the picture in the back of the book. The children really used their imaginations and all the beautiful colours really lit up the room.

“I loved making our Alien have lots of arms and eyes by using different body parts in our group”

“I pretended my scarf was a colouring pen to draw my own shapes”

In the middle of the week I visited Balfour Infant school and we used the book ‘The Room on the Broom’ with Year 2. This is one of my favourite books of all time and my own children love it, so I was so excited to do this one for book week and dressed up for the occasion. In our warm up the children moved around the hall in up and down pathways pretending they were on their own broomstick. They then had to do different movements and shapes to represent the animals from the story as well as the witches hat, bow and wand. We then used these movements to learn a short dance which the children did so well at performing. Their favourite movement was our one for wand where we added in a little spell, ‘Swish, Wish, Woosh!’. The children formed their own groups and created their own mud monster shapes and making them move. There were some excellent shapes made using different levels, body parts and facial expressions! We finished off the session creating spells with our ribbon hoops creating lots of patterns.

“I used my face to show my mean mud monster”

“I really enjoyed making spells with my ribbon”

“Thank you for a magical dance!”

I spent my last day of book week at Halling Primary School. My day started with year 4 and our theme was Mary Poppins. I arrived with my Mary Poppins bag of objects and as I pulled each object out of the bag the children created a movement to represent it. They really thought outside the box and created some imaginative ideas. The favourite items were a sieve, a fishing net and a blanket!

We then looked at some of the key movement used in the dance scene in the film at the park. The children learnt key movements and learnt a short motif in the style of musical theatre. They had so much energy dancing and made their movements big and strong which was so lovely to see.

The children then got into groups and were each given a picture of a scene from a painting. They had to create a short sequence of movement that showed their picture and when we showed each other our dances the groups watching had to guess which picture they were trying to show. The children gave some great guesses and created some wonderful movements.

The session finished using colourful scarfs in a cool down to the song ‘Let’s go Fly a Kite’. They found different ways of moving their scarf and created a wonderful calm atmosphere before throwing them into the air creating a ceiling of colour.

My week ended with Yr R at Halling and we looked at the book ‘Dinosaur’s love underpants’. The children loved making different dinosaur body parts with their own bodies complete with sound effects for example the dino jaw and dino feet. We stomped like dinosaurs and learnt movements for different types of dinosaurs – 2 favourites were the T-Rex and a Pterodactyl. After putting some of these movements together in a little dance, the children then got into groups and created their own dinosaur shapes. There were lots of different dinosaurs including a diplodocus where one group made an arch shape between dancers for its curved back before adding on a long tail movement balancing on one leg. I was really impressed by all the different ideas.

We finished our session using the giant elastic sitting in a large underpants shape as a group which was marked out on the floor using tape. We moved the elastic in lots of different ways as a group, up, down, sideways, in a circle, wrippling it up and down before pinging it into the middle like ‘pingy pants elastic’.

I really enjoyed planning and delivering these lessons and am looking forward to more book week sessions in the future.

“I love making the dinosaur sounds when I’m dancing”

“My dinosaur has little arms like a T-Rex”