"Academic Excellence Through, With, and In the Arts and Technology”              

Mrs. Cissy Whipp’s Dance News

School Notes April 9-27:

Kindergarten, Mrs. Poiencot’s Class: We have been working on recognizing patterns in movement.  We are also identifying rhyming actions in our warm up dances: hop/stop, jump/bump, skip/tip, and creep/sleep. They are learning to identify different action words and can create short dances based on their choices.

1^st Grade, Mrs. Nelson’s Class: We have been working with locomotors and non-locomotors. The students learned some new dance patterns by doing a dance called “Apples and Oranges” in which we dance in place (non-locomotor), then in groups that travel in to center and out again (locomotor.) They are learning to identify different action words and can create short dances based on their choices.

 2^nd Grade, Mrs. McNamara’s Class: We have been working with locomotors and non-locomotors. The students learned some new dance patterns by doing a 4 part pattern dance and then creating them individually. We also danced with scarves and integrated this into the science curriculum by creating an Erosion Dance. The scarves represent water or wind and they “erode” the students who are holding their Rock Shapes in the middle of the room. Each time a dancer with a scarf goes by; the Rocks get smaller & lower to the ground to represent erosion.

 3^rd Grade Exploratory Dance:  We have explored the Building Blocks of Dance: Body, Energy, Space, and Time.  We are learning our first two basic folk dances: “Sasha, Sasha” and the “Hora.” Next we will learn to make Movement Maps to record our pathways through the dance room.

4^th Grade Dance:. We will are still finishing up with writing poetry honing our skills for LEAP.  Another LEAP skill we worked on is comparing fractions and percentages as it relates to body shapes and turns for Mrs. Dean’s class.

5^th Grade Dance: We are learning dances for our Spring Showcase: The Magical Land of Oz.  Since there are not dances written into the play, we have to be very creative. The dancers are playing such parts as: The Twister which starts the show, some Munchkins, the Poppies, the Flying Monkeys, the Citizens of Oz, and they all join in making a giant rainbow for our Finale song, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”.