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| Dance |
Our first book was Color Dance by Ann Jonas. Even though it's older than I am literally...it was published in 1989), I love this book for storytime. It has simple words, shows the relationships between colors, and gives lots of diversity because it represents children of all colors and genders dancing together. This book would also be great for a color themed storytime.
Next, because of the kids dancing with colorful scarves in the book, we danced with our own colorful scarves! I passed out one per child (and any grownup who wanted one) and we waved them to "Get Ready, Get Set, Let's Dance" by Greg and Steve.
Despite looking all week online and in several print resources, I wasn't able to find a calm-down chant that had anything to do with dance. If you have one, please leave it in the comments! So after we collected the scarves, I used a wonderful song that I have been waiting for the perfect opportunity to use. My one reservation is that the character Joe sings it on Parks and Recreation, and I was a little afraid the parents would recognize it from that. Although I saw a small spark of recognition in one of the regular moms' eyes, but this song went really well and did a great job focusing the kids' attention back on me. I will definitely be using it again.
The second book was Everybunny Dance by Ellie Sandall. It worked out great as a storytime book! First of all, it rhymes, which is always helpful to get littles to pay attention. Second, there are movements you can easily ask the kids to do. Whole pages are devoted to "everybunny" dancing, playing instruments, jumping, and running.
After our second book, I actually paused the storytime action long enough to make a quick craft. We made ribbon dancers today, and I wanted everyone to have theirs to dance with for our last couple of songs. This craft was extremely easy; tongue depressors, clear tape, and short-ish lengths of ribbon I had a volunteer cut for me ahead of time. Not only was it easy and cheap, the kids were absolutely delighted by them. Plus, it only took about five minutes for all 30 kids and their parents to put together.
Our final movement song before saying goodbye was "Everybody Dance" by Teacher Dan. Everyone swinging their ribbons around as this calypso beat played was the most fun I've had all week!
Here is a list of dance books I displayed today:
- Everybunny Dance—Sandall
- Dance! A Story About Being Happy—Bendall-Brunello
- Color Dance—Jonas
- Giant Dance Party—Bird
- Dance is for Everyone—Zuill
- Sock Monkey Boogie-Woogie—Bell
- Spunky Little Monkey—Martin
- Duck Sock Hop—Kohuth
- Cats’ Night Out—Stutson
- Dilly Dog’s Dizzy Dancing—DeRubertis
- Naughty Toes—Bonwill
- The All-American Jump and Jive Jig—Proeller Hueston
- I Got the Rhythm—Schofield-Morrison
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