Dance TDT: Dance a Story

For the Dance TDT, I have decided to create a dance lesson based on the book “The Hungry Caterpillar”.

The outcome for this lesson is:

EXA 0-08a – I have the opportunity and freedom to choose and explore ways that I can move rhythmically, expressively and playfully.

We will start with a ‘copy me’ warm up. Inserted above is the music to be played during this. Standing in a circle, I will begin by doing different moves to the music (stamping feet, swinging arms, jumping etc.) before allowing the children to get involved by choosing people around the circle to be the leader.

Once the class is warmed up, we will move onto the story. Explain to the class that we are going to be acting out a story through dance. In this specific story, we are going to be the Hungry Caterpillar, acting out its actions from the book.

[Above music will be playing for this part] Start off on the floor, curled up in a ball as if we are in our egg. When the caterpillar bursts out of the egg, when stand up stretching and yawning as if we have just woken up. When our stomach rumbles, we rub our stomachs.

[Above music will be playing for this part] Now that we are hungry, we will go on the search for some food. Walking around the room looking as if we are searching for something, until we find a big apple! Music stops and we pretend to munch on our newly found food. Music comes back on and we search around for more food as we are still hungry. Repeat this for each day of the week.

[Above music will be playing for this part] When the food is being listed off, we will continuously pretend to eat, making sure to loudly say “mmmm”. Once the list is finished, rub our stomachs and have a pained expression on our faces, due to the stomach ache from eating so much. Walk around pretending to be a large caterpillar, seeing how big we can make ourselves look.

[Above music will be playing for this part] Slowing our walk down, before crouching down small (not lying down). Pretend to wrap ourselves up tightly before going back to sleep. Keep the music playing as we sleep for a minute.

[Music for this Section] We begin to feel our bodies vibrating and bursting with energy. Music will start playing and we burst out of our cocoons and jump into the air. Begin to run around, flapping our arms as if we are butterflies, experiencing the world for the first time.

Bring the kids back in and begin a cool down.

Begin the cool down with slow marching on the spot. Watch out for any kids trying to do it too fast or too energetically and explain to them it is to start bringing your heart rate back down to normal. Next move onto a body shake; starting at legs, shake each one before moving up the body and finishing at head. Finally, a big stretch over our head, moving our arms in a circle.

Before finishing the lesson off, end with a discussion. Recap on the story and what action was for each part of the story. Ask the class some questions to do with the lesson: which was their favourite part of the story/dance?; did they think the music made dancing along to the song easier?; if they could come up with a different move for one part of the story, what would it be?

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