Dance, Drama & Movement: Young Learner Activities

Young Learner Activities

Movement and role playing are great ways of integrating environmental education with play. There’s no set way to move or act; freedom encourages creativity.

Many of these ideas can be used both inside and outside. With movement and drama, props are useful. For example, when talking about hedgehogs, have pictures of them curled, eating, running and the like. Integrate other hedgehog activities into the session.

Warm Up

Before you start any movement or dance-based activity, it’s important that the children (and you!), warm up. This will help to prevent injury to muscles or limbs. The warm up can be fairly simple – ensuring that all parts of the body are used.

The use of music is highly personal. In some cases the activity can actually work better without any musical background, but very often music can help. For the warm up use bright rhythmic music, but try not to choose pop music.

Try ‘Simple Simon Says’ with different body parts being shaken/wiggled/bent/rubbed:

• flap your arms like a bird flying;

• nod your head like a bird pecking;

• wiggle your body like a fish swimming.

Teacher leads to start then children can take over in turns.

Suggest the children move like a certain animal. Use clapping to get them to stop and then change the animal:

• jumping like frogs or kangaroos;

• crawling and sliding like snakes or slugs;

• flitting like butterflies.

Cool Down

It is important that at the end of an activity the children have a chance to calm down and relax. One of the best ways for children to relax is to lie down quietly on the floor, with their eyes shut.

TEACHING MOVEMENT AND DANCE

By putting on a record or playing a simple rhythm on an instrument, you can transform rainy-day wiggles into welcome outbursts of free-form dancing. Be sure that you have plenty of space and that the noise will not disturb others. Start simply and slowly, keeping in touch with the kinds of dancing the children want to do. Let them take turns thinking up new movements.

1. Start with simple warm-up exercises like touching toes, walking, running, stretching, twisting, bending, bouncing, jumping, or hopping in time to the music. Or have a parade. Set the beat by clapping your hands, and in no time the children will be marching all over the house.

2. Start a game by giving complete directions and instructions for a “dance,” and gradually make them more difficult. To begin, say, “Jump, jump, jump” as you jump. Next do the movements without describing them. Jump but do not say the word out loud. Let the children imitate your movements without your instructions. Now change it around and have the children do what you say, but do not demonstrate the motion. Say “Jump, jump, jump,” but do not jump yourself. This way, the child will have to listen and think to be able to do what you ask.

3. Call out different parts of the body and have the children move just that. Swing both arms, then first one arm and then the other. Or have them move the whole body to music: sway, shake, run, hop, or jump to a beat.

4. Make drastic changes in the rhythm and tempo while the children dance. This will help them concentrate on listening to the sound and dancing with it.

5. Do pantomime dancing: lumber like an elephant or weave like a snake; pretend to be a bouncing ball or a tree in the wind; someone picking up spilled pins or carrying heavy packages.

6. Older children will enjoy learning folk, round, and simple square dances. It will be necessary for them to keep in time with the music, carry out instructions as they are given, and work with others.

If dancing ends too abruptly, the children’s energy is left scattered and raw. It’s best to wind down gradually from kangaroo steps to snail steps; from a bouncing ball to a floating feather.

LEARN BY DOING

Here are some activity suggestions to help you learn more about children and their response to music and rhythm. Be creative in choosing your activities.

Observe children every chance you get. See how they use and respond to music and rhythm in their play. Watch each child as a whole and watch the parts of their bodies, too. What do their eyes look like when they sing? What do their feet do while they listen to music and draw in time to the rhythm?

1. Flowers

Initially this can just be the life cycle of a seed. Begin very small curled on the floor, grow up as tall as possible opening your flower to the air. Keeping the feet (roots!) firmly in one place, let the petals move in the wind. As it becomes colder (closer to autumn/winter) the petals fall off and the children lower themselves onto the floor.

2. Characterizations of Animals

Acting out animals’ characteristics provides an ideal opportunity for children to test their observation of a variety of animals familiar to them. It also provides a starting point for a group mime/role play.

• Birds fly, hop or run, peck at their food and fold their wings backward.

• Ladybirds fly, crawl.

• Owls turn their heads round so far they can almost see behind them, they spend time sitting, looking by keeping very still except for their turn of head, then swoop on their prey.

• Ducks waddle on land, but move smoothly on water.

• Seagulls move their heads from side to side while flying, they bank like an aeroplane when turning, sit on the sea (moving up & down) to catch food.

• Chickens’ bodies lean forward with head up, they walk with a jerky unfolding action and flutter wings without really flying.

• Bees fly into flowers and come out backwards.

• Rabbits thump the ground with hind foot when frightened, to warn others of danger.

3. Movement – Individual and Group Levels

This relates to observation of animal movement. A good starting point would be children identifying the various movement forms of insects. Some of the creatures could be moved by individuals, others, for example spiders and millipedes, would require group work – due to the number of legs!! This would need co-operation from the group to move as one cohesive unit. This could be achieved initially by working in pairs then linking into fours and so on. The children need to find a way of moving their legs in the ‘correct’ manner, which will require concentration.

4. Hibernating Hedgehogs

Hedgehogs curl up to protect themselves. This activity shows how well a hedgehog can curl up and stay protected even when a friend tries to open them. Demonstrate before the children have a go. Lie on the floor, on your side, curled up. Ask one or two children to pull firmly, but not to hurt, on your legs. Show that you can stay curled up even when they pull. Let the children have a go – watch out for over enthusiastic children wrenching one another.

5. Peas in a Pod

In pairs children explore doing different movements together – as alike as peas in a pod. Can they slither together, slide across the floor together, creep together, crawl together etc. In time this can develop to three – four peas in a pod.

6. Elephants and Mice

This is a group activity with the children sitting in a circle. Initially the children tap the floor with their feet very quickly and quietly – the mice. On a cue from the teacher the mice become elephants, much slower and louder tapping with their feet. Children then have the opportunity of moving as a mouse or elephant as defined by the main groups’ tapping feet.

7. Transport

This provides an opportunity for working toward a long role play/movement piece. It shows the mechanism for building up over time – developing the ideas as the class progresses. It is useful to do one ‘transport type’ per lesson – so that the children do not get too much stimuli at once. A simple road layout may assist in the role play. Teachers and assistants could join in by being policemen and traffic wardens!

• Cars and taxis: the children can be individual car owners – or maybe passengers with a car. The children should think about the actions that car drivers go through – opening doors, putting on seat belts, starting the car. Discuss the advantages of cars (go where and when you want, carry heavy shopping, etc.) and disadvantages (speeding drivers, traffic jams, pollution, etc.).

• Trains and Metro: children can work in groups to be engine and carriages as well as driver and passengers.

• Buses: this could involve a static role play with passengers sitting in seats arranged like a bus. They could react to the movement of the bus, driver, other passengers. The group could also move around the room, with the bus stopping to let passengers on and off.

• Cyclists: the children could think of the problems of cycling on a busy road or in a park.

• On foot: again children could discuss the problems of crossing roads, green cross code, waiting for a bus, getting a taxi.

8. Rainstorms

This group activity starts with the children in a circle – the calm before the storm. The activity is teacher led with the sound of raindrops moving round the circle – initially single taps on the floor – single raindrops. The sound and tapping activity develops around the circle building to a crescendo – increasing the tapping on the floor or moving to tapping tummies.

Once the noise level of the rainstorm has developed, the storm drifts away, the noise level decreases and the raindrops slowly stop.

9. Trees and Leaves

Children can be trees swaying in the wind or losing their leaves. (Leaves have a wide variety of uses – in costumes, as a medium for walking on, as a means of observation – shapes and falling for a movement class.)

10. Animal Pictures

Stick pictures of animals to cards – very pictorial and simple animals that have distinct movement/noise characteristics. Children choose cards and then mimic that creature, in movement and sound, for the others to identify.

11. Sound Orchestra

This is a development of animal pictures. The group sits in a circle and each child chooses an animal card. Each child lets the group hear their noise. Now become the conductor. Each child will make their noise and once started will go on repeating it until you signal them to stop. Start at one point in the circle and bring in the rest of the company one by one. Let each child make their sound several times before cueing in the next.

Eventually the whole group will be making their noise. This activity can be really rewarding but will take a time to develop.

12. Interpretive Dance (content: music/movement)

Play short selections of several different types/styles of music (classical, rock and roll, country western, music from other countries). Then encourage children to think about how the music “feels” (descriptive words: bouncy, sleepy, etc.) and to move to the music. Ask questions and use descriptive words as you do this activity (ex.: “Janelle is hopping. Janelle, does that music sound “hoppy”? What does it make you think of?”). Set some safety rules: “You can move any way you like as long as you are not hurting anyone.” etc.).

13. Pet Play

Give children some props so that they can pretend to be pets. Be sure and ask the children what they think they will need. Cardboard boxes or blocks to use for a house; food and water dishes; empty pet food boxes; soft pillows; paper to write the names of the pets; pet toys (ex.: squeeze toys, scratching post).

Use stuffed animals to create a pet store. Ask a local pet store for additional props (posters of breeds of animals, cages, informational books about pets, etc.). Be sure to include a cash register, calculator and/or writing materials for the “salesclerks”!

Substitute a few doctor props for the sales props and you’ll have a veterinary office!

14. Preposition Charades (content: cognition of spatial relationships)

Place a chair, a large block and a ball on the floor. Have children come one at a time to you and whisper in their ear a position or action, such as “stand in front of the block” or “step over the ball.” Let other children guess what the direction was by watching the child perform the action. [Emphasize the position words and repeat them often during the activity.]

1. Let each child whisper in your ear what action they will do.

2. On cards, draw simple stick figures performing position actions and let each child choose a card to perform.

3. If children are beginners with spatial position words, choose only 3–4 concepts at first. Later, add new ones.

4. Choose other objects to place on the floor that would work well for words such as under, between, through, inside/outside, etc.

MUSIC & DANCING

Music and dancing are inside each child. All we do as teachers and parents is let them out. That is good news for those of us who are not gifted in these areas. It tells us that all we need to do is encourage, not “teach” music and movement. Here are some ideas that may help you “let the music out.”

Make Music

Sing as you work. Any and all songs are acceptable. Sing songs you know or make up new ones. The easiest way to make up a new song is to sing new words to familiar tunes. For example, to the tune of “Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush,” you may sing: This is the way we cut the paper, cut the paper, cut the paper; This is the way we cut the paper, so we can make a cat.”
Or you might sing the following to the tune of “Farmer in the Dell”:

Mary picks up toys, Mary picks up toys;
Heigh ho the derry oh, Mary picks up toys.

(Mary gets some help...John piles the blocks...)

Add children’s names or use different actions as you go along.
You can also sing along with records or tapes. Children often know popular songs on the radio. Singing songs together also can be fun. If you play an instrument, encourage children to sing along as you play.

Respond to Music

Play music that creates a mood (for example, a lullaby, a march, slow and dreamy music, or Latin rhythms) or music that features one instrument (such as the violin, trumpet, or drums). Let children respond by painting, using markers or crayons, or shaping clay.
Encourage participation by making comments such as, “Why don’t you paint how the music makes you feel?” or “That fast music helped you make so many little lines.” Commenting on the child’s activity (“You are moving slowly now”) rather than praising the art (“That’s a pretty picture”) is more likely to encourage creativity in their responses.

MOVEMENT ACTIVITIES

Take advantage of young children’s love for music and movement. These activities will help them work off excess energy, develop a love of music, and become more creative! Movement describes what young children do. They are rarely still. Try exercising. It’s fun and helps everyone stay flexible and feel fit! Think of ways to let children create their own dance movements – to let the dancing out of the child.

A child can develop and express his or her personality in his own way – pretending to be animals, snowflakes, fairies, giants, snails, mice, etc. Some of these creative play activities require the use of large muscles and help in the development of those muscles.

1. Hear and Feel Rhythms by Clapping

Try clapping together as a group. Start with one steady beat: CLAP, CLAP, CLAP.
Then try two with the first beat accented: CLAP-CLAP, CLAP-CLAP.
And three: CLAP-CLAP-CLAP, CLAP-CLAP, CLAP.
And four: CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP, CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP.

After the children understand how to clap along, encourage them to move their hands or dance around the room in response to the rhythm. You can clap slow or fast. The beat may be even or uneven.

2. Create a Rhythm Band

Try using body noises to create rhythms. Try claps (hand to hand, hand to thigh, hand to head, hand to floor, or hand to table), stamping feet, clicking tongues, or snapping fingers. Make rhythm instruments for the children to use. Tap spoons on a wooden block or knock wooden blocks together. Let children bang two pot lids together like cymbals.

3. Follow the Leader

The leader child moves freely about. He or she may imitate animals, hop, skip, or whatever. The others must follow the leader and act as the leader does.

4. Guess What I Am?

Without saying a word, a child tries to act out the movements of some object. Suggestions include an airplane making a landing, a rooster strutting around the barnyard, a cement truck dumping its load, a clock telling the time of day. The child may think up things to do, or the teacher may whisper suggestions.

ACTION SONGS

I Can Do That!

Can you move right to the beat?
I can do that – I can do that
Can you touch your head, your shoulders and your feet?
I can do that – I can do that
Can you shake hands with a neighbor or friend?
I can do that – I can do that
Can you spread a sandwich with butter and jam?
I can do that – I can do that
Now stop, get ready, jump up high and say
I can do that – I can do that
And I believe it’s true (Children echo & sing)
There’s so much I can do
And I feel good inside
I can do it if I try
Can you paint a picture so very nice?
I can do that – I can do that
Can you steer and pedal your own bike?
I can do that – I can do that
Can you help out and clean up your room?
I can do that – I can do that

Can you show thumbs up and be proud of you?
I can do that – I can do that
Now stop, get ready, jump up high and say
I can do that – I can do that

Jack Hartmann

Three Bears with a Beat

Clap on the ( ) words.

(Once) upon a (time) in the (mid)dle
of the (woods) there were (three) (bears).
(One) was a (Pa)pa bear, (one) was a (Ma)ma bear,
(one) was a (Wee) Bear. ((x)) ((x)).
A(long) came the (girl) with the (gold)en curls. (x)
She (knocked) on the (door) but (no) one was (there).
So she (walked) right (in) cause she (did)n’t (care).

(Home), (home), (home), came the (Pa)pa bear,
(Home), (home), (home), came the (Ma)ma bear,
(Home), (home), (home), came the (wee) bear.
((x)) ((x)) (change voice with each bear)
“(Some)one’s been (eat)ing my (porr)idge!”
((x)) said the (Pa)pa (bear).
“Grrrrrrrr” (hold hands in front like sharp claws)
“(Some)one’s been (eat)ing my (porr)idge!
((x)) said the (Ma)ma (bear).
“Ahhhhhhh” (throw both hands up in surprise)
“(Hey)-baba-(ree)-bear,” (said) the little (wee) bear,
“(Some)one has (eat)en my (soup)!
Hmmmmmph!” (cross arms on chest and pout)

“(Some)one’s been (sit)ting in (my) (chair)!”
said the (Pa)pa (bear). “Grrrrrrrrr”
“(Some)one’s been (sit)ting in (my) (chair)!”
said the (Ma)ma (bear)!” “Ahhhhhhh”
“(Hey)-baba-(ree),bear,” said the little (wee) bear, “(Some)one has (brok)en my (seat)! Hmmmmmph!”
“(Some)one’s been (sleep)ing in (my) (bed)!”
said the (Pa)pa (bear)! “Grrrrrrrrr”
“(Some)one’s been (sleep)ing in (my) (bed)!”
said the (Ma)ma (bear). “Ahhhhhhhh”
“(Hey)-baba-(ree)-bear, (said) the little (wee) (bear), “(Some)one is (still) in my (bed)! Hmmmmmph!”

(Change to a whisper)

Just then Goldilocks woke up. (Scream, arms raised:) “Aaaaahhhhhhhhh!”
She (jumped) out of (bed) and she (beat) it out of (there)! (point with thumb)
“(Bye),(bye), (bye),” said the (Pa)pa bear. (wave)
“(Bye), (bye), (bye),” said the (Ma)ma bear. (wave)
“(Hey)-baba-(ree)-bear,” (said) the little (wee) bear, “(This) is the (end) of our (tale). Hmmmmmph!”

Three Brown Bears

(3 Blind Mice)

Three Brown Bears,
Three Brown Bears,
See all their beds,
See all their chairs.
The Mommy cooked in a big black pot,
The Daddy’s porridge was much too hot,
The Baby Bear always cried a lot,
Three Brown Bears.

Fairy Tales

(Jingle Bells)

Once upon a time
In a land not far away,
A girl kissed a frog –
And that just made his day!

Fairy Tales! Fairy Tales!
Read them everyday!
Oh, what fun it is to hear
How (Goldilocks) got away.

Far across the town,
Red Riding Hood took fright –
She found a wolf in Granny’s bed
When she kissed her good-night.

Fairy Tales! Fairy Tales!
Full of joy and laughter!
Do you know how this one ends?
Why, it’s HAPPILY EVER AFTER!