Dance in SchoolsEducating DanceSchoolsRainforest Animals
Written by Jenny, TRS Teacher
This term at Snodland Primary I have been working with Year 1 to create a dance all about Rainforest Animals to tie in with their science topic. The children have been really interested in learning about the habitat of the rainforest and the animals that live there.
We started off exploring the Rainforest, we looked at the trees in the Rainforest and the canopy’s they create by layering on top of each other. The children worked in pairs to create balances using different body parts to show the tree branches resting and balancing on each other. Each pair really thought about interesting ways to balance using their hands, feet and even elbows! They trusted each other and used stillness to hold their balances, developing their confidence too.
Next we looked at 2 different animals that live in the Rainforest and their key features. They learnt about how movements in dance use different dynamics and we used 2 different animals to show this. The first one was the sloth. The children enjoyed the challenge of making their movements super slow and using movements to show them hanging upside down, swimming and curling up.
The next animal was the leopard, this time they made their movements really fast and enjoyed leaping, balancing and climbing to show hoe a leopard moves. Finally they had to pick another Rainforest animal and create 2 movements and an ending position. We had snakes, Toucans, ring tailed lemurs and butterflies.
The children were so creative in their ideas and loved performing in front of each other too. I cannot wait to go back and teach them another topic next term!
