During the dance workshops, students learnt the importance of letting go of how others might perceive them, and to instead feel the music and allow it to help their body move in dynamic ways.  Our tutor played some music and we were asked to ‘commit’ to how we felt we should move with that music.

Copying the manikin:

A wooden statue was placed in the centre of the room, students stood around the room to copy the statue. The statue was placed in all kinds of positions that allowed the students to explore how their body moved and how flexible they were.  This activity would work well with three year olds.

Streamer dancing:

This activity will be great for implementing in the 15 month to 3 year age group. The students are given a streamer each and music is played. They then move with their streamer to the music, while they are asked to go high, or go low and make big circles or smaller circles.

Suellen Welch (Dance tutor) shared some principals and core values that she incorporates with any age group of children or adults when facilitating a dance experience. Some of these include the following:

• Empowerment (does the process encourage participants to believe in their own ability to create dance and movement and can they actually help drive the process? “share the power”)
• Giving people the opportunity to create dance that reflects them and their community and enables them to communicate part of their unique story.

 

Dance Resource for Field Experience

 

An aspect of dance that was taught in the workshop was rhythm and timing. To incorporate this into my field experience, my resource is a CD that contains song that have a quick tempo (making children dance quickly), songs that have a deep slow bass (making children step slowly and use their body to reflect the song) and dramatic/thematic songs (making children use the space to create dramatic poses with their bodies).
The Songs on the CD relate to the Queensland Kindergarten Guidlines:

Teachers promote exploration of and interest in cultural, traditional and contemporary music, visual arts, dance, drama and media (2010)

 

Here is an example of songs that are on the CD

 

- The Hamster Dance (fast rhythm)

- He's a Pirate: Badelt (dramatic orchestral music)

-  Bollywood Dance (exploring diverse cultures)

- Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake (for ballet)

- Into the Jungle (Jungle music: children explore characters in dance)

Links to the EYLF (2009)

Outcome 1: Children have a strong sense of identity

-       combine gross and fine motor movement and balance to achieve increasingly complex patterns of activity including dance, creative movement and drama

 
Outcome 3: Children have a strong sense of wellbeing

-       respond through movement to traditional and contemporary music, dance and storytelling

 

Outcome 5: Children are effective communicators

-          Use the creative arts such as drawing, painting, sculpture, drama, dance, movement, music and storytelling to express ideas and make meaning.