Let’s try dance
By: Karen Burns
This month I would like to look at Free or Creative Dance.
This can seem quite daunting at first, but here are some guidelines to help you have a successful dance session with
your children.
• ALWAYS have a plan – just putting on some music for the children to dance around to will normally end in
chaos, with few of the children moving in a creative way.
• Consider the music you will use carefully. ‘Pop’ music often has inappropriate words or children have
already seen the dance video that accompanies it and may try to copy this.
• There is a huge variety of classical music to choose from, all readily available on YouTube and it is lovely to
expose children to a music genre that they may never have experienced before.
Decide what your dance is going to be about – perhaps matching a topic or theme that you are exploring with the
children already. Then find some appropriate music.
If you type in, for example, ‘under the sea music’, a lovely selection of music is available.
• Introduce your music to the children – I would
normally do this with the children sitting down in
a circle and with their eyes closed.
• Ask them what the music makes them think of –
it is often better to give them 2 alternatives,
the one you want them to say (fish swimming),
and the one it is not (elephants stamping).
• Ask the children “if you were a fish/crab/seahorse
swimming under the sea – how would you move?
Close your eyes while I play the music and imagine
yourself being a fish/crab/seahorse”.
• Ask a child to come into the middle of the circle and show everyone how they would move.
• What else lives under the sea?
• How would the crab move, etc.
• Let children demonstrate to each other and then allow them to try out the movements.
• Be specific with praise “I like the way you are wriggling as you move”, “you are going up and down just like
a sea horse would”.
• Once the children have some idea of the movements they want to do, reintroduce the music.
• Only play the music for a short time – you want quality movement not quantity.
• Always have a ‘performance’ - half of the children sit down and watch the other half dance.
• Ask the children what they particularly liked about the others’ dance.