Children love to dance! It is a really good way to calm children down before we start Circle Time. Circle time is about consistently introducing calendar, weather, shapes, letters, and the ABC's. But because it is something that happens everyday and it is also asking small children to focus for short periods of time, helping children do something silly and loud before sitting can go a long way in helping to maintain concentration and teaching patience and taking turns. Now I am not crazy, Circle time does not last a billion years. I mean that would cause the whole rest of the day to descend into chaos. With me crying in time out and the children demanding I bake them more banana-chocolate chip muffins. I am kidding...somewhat. You guys know preschoolers can smell when you are floundering, when the pause is too long. Circle time last about 15 minutes if not shorter. This is how our morning schedule looks: 7:30am-800am- Breakfast 805am-815- Morning Dance Party/ Pledge 815am-830am- Circle time 830am-900am- Centers As you can see from my schedule, we move pretty fast through our day. I do this so that the children are not bored. We are constantly moving and switching activities. During their free time which is from 900am-10am they see me for small group learning while using anything new they learned during centers with their friends. Before Lunch time the children have their specials of the day. Every day we learn about something new and learn how to apply it to the world around them. Which brings me to what this post is about. Thursday's!!! We Dance on Thursdays. I would love it if I was graceful and creative enough to create a dance program for my class. But I am not, so that is where Mother Goose Time comes through in a big way for me. They have a dance program called Dance n' beats. They have the 4 45 min dance classes already made out in the lesson plan book. You do not HAVE to follow the lesson plans. You can create one of your own with the way the book is set up. It also comes with a video. I am sad to say that because I am not graceful (see video above), I am not able to confidently teach the children to do the dances from the video with just the aid of the music cd. So I use the video, and it works wonderfully. I think the only downside is that while the rest of curriculum takes time off my prep, The Dance curriculum adds to it. You do need too have certain parts of the lessons prepped ahead of time, especially since some of the lessons have an art project. I will say that the prep is probably no more than 15 minutes of your time if you have everything in the house. This is not a program you can just open up and start using without prep time. Like Batman needs prep time before a fight, we need prep time before Dance class. So I have a video to show you of my kiddos doing some of the dance from this month! I loved it so much! If you need more information please feel free to ask! |