Dance for AdultsDance in SchoolsSchoolsHalloween 2022

Written by Jenny

I have had so much fun delivering Halloween session over the last week! It has been great to deliver sessions at after school club as well as Active Armchairs and using lots of spooky props- I love a prop!!

So I started my Halloween fun at Pilgrims View Care Home and Fairby Grange Care Home. When I arrived at both homes there were Halloween decorations up so I knew the residents would enjoy a spooky themed class! Some of the songs we danced to were ‘The Adams Family, ‘Ghost busters’, ‘It’s a Kinda Magic’, ‘Monster Mash’, ‘Spooky’, ‘Devil in Disguise’ and The Harry Potter theme tune’. There was also some singing along!

The residents at both homes also love a prop so they were really excited to see what I had brought along! We used orange and black ribbons, orange, green, purple and black scarfs, white hankies (for ghosts) and bell wands to cast some magic spells! I also took along my spooky spider web made out of tights for our group activity! This was great for grip as they had to hold on tight to make sure they didn’t ping into the middle! We stretched it, shook it up and down and moved our arms side to side to make it swing! This was a favourite at Pilgrims View, they loved moving it and working together.

At Fairby Grange we had a lovely magic moment casting spells with our wands to the Harry Potter theme tune! One of our lovely residents had a smile on her face so big it filled my heart with so much joy – she was loving it so much and afterwards she said ‘That was so magical, thank you’

‘I really enjoyed today’s session, thank you so much’ – Dottie, resident

‘Thank you for doing a Halloween session, it has really got us into the spooky spirit’ – Carer

‘What a great idea using hankies as Ghosts’ – Audrey, resident

‘I liked being a zombie and moving on the spider web’

‘I really enjoyed being spooky characters’

I then visited Snodland Primary School to deliver a Halloween themed session at dance club. The children were really excited to be dancing to some spooky songs and using some spooky props!

We started the session with our warm up to ‘Spooky Scary Skeletons’ – we moved each part of our body one by one – shaking our skeleton bones and took it in turns to do our favourite spooky movement to copy each other.

We played a game of Travel like a…. Halloween character. I put my coloured spots all around the room, they had to travel from one spot to the next as a witch, zombie, skeleton, ghost, pumpkin and monster. I also paused the music and they had to freeze keeping their characters shapes in their body! They loved using their facial expressions too!

I taught them a dance sequence to ‘Thriller’, there was some great use of shape in the body and the children really embraced the movement and got into character. They then had to create their own spooky movements using turns and travelling movements in style of their favourite character. We also used orange, green, purple and black scarfs to decorate ourselves to create our costumes for the dance. I loved seeing the movements they created!

I then used my spider web prop, we all held a part of it and stretched it as far as we could, we then took it in turns to find ways to move in and out of the web, crawling under and over it! The children loved this – they definitely found some interesting ways of moving in it!

We cooled down with our ribbon rings and took it in turns to create a spell using our bodies in lots of ways in slow motion!

I have loved teaching these Halloween sessions across different ages – it’s been so much fun!

My Halloween session is one of my favourite things to teach for Active Armchairs. It’s varied, unexpected and exciting and I know we will always have a laugh… especially when I get the tights out! This year was no exception. We used hankies to have fights with ghosts as ghost busters, we challenged ourselves to clapping rhythms for The Adams Family and became Spooky, Scary Skeletons.

I got the black tights out to create a web and, at Fort Horsted Care Home, was helped by a family member to arrange the tights all over the room in a stretchy, pattern. We climbed through it like spiders ourselves and Peter was grateful that he didn’t have to wear them! Then we all choreographed some movement and watched in wonder as the web moved strangely.

I’m a big Harry Potter nut so I handed us some ‘wands’ and taught everyone some spells. We laughed about where we would go if we could open any door, Alohamora, and discussed about what we would summon, Accio, if we could summon anything. Then we did cool down to I Put A Spell On You by Nina Simone.

Halloween was great and I can’t wait to do something similarly exciting for Christmas.

I’ve been having a wonderful time during the Active Armchairs sessions at Herne Place and the participants have said they enjoy themselves too. One lady said she always feels happier afterwards and I have seen the improvement in lots of participants coordination and range of movement. 

We had lots of silly spooky fun during our Halloween themed session last week. The participants made their own wands out of sticks and ghost puppets out of some old net curtains. We sang and passed magic around the circle to ‘Witchcraft’  by Frank Sinatra and danced to Elvis Presley’s ‘Devil in Disguise’.  Everybody enjoyed an hour of letting go and being a bit silly! Lots of pink cheeks and smiles by the end of the session. We are looking forward to our bonfire night theme next week! 

Halloween is one of my favourite times of the year and this is my first as a TRS teacher. It’s been wonderful to see how many care homes embrace Halloween by putting decorations up and doing related activities .

At Byron Lodge we jumped straight into the spooky session with our warm up and even made spiders with our hands and showed off our dexterity as we wiggled our fingers as legs. We continued onto a favourite with the particpants, which was the Monster Mash. We performed some classic hand jive movements and we all loved the ‘mash potato’ move.

We spoke about carving pumpkins and discovered that all the residents bar one , didn’t actually like the taste of pumpkin.

The spooky session continued with the aid of a friendly ghost balloon and provided lots of laughter as we batted it around to each other.

The highlight of the session was all of us shouting ‘Ghostbusters’ together in the song and it was so lovely to see the joy on all of the participants’ faces. They have even asked for me to do another Halloween session again next week with them!