Monday, June 11, 2012

Learning Movement Words

The purpose of this activity was to teach the kids (especially my daughter) how to move when I said the following words: travelling, roll, jump, hop, turn and pause.
First I explain the two most common words - travel means move (walk) and pause means freeze (they already knew this one from the Freeze Dance that we did). 
We differentiated hop and jump as follows:
Hop: moving while jumping
Jump: jumping in one spot
But then I learned that was wrong by definition.  The PROPER definition is as follows:
Hop: A hop starts on one foot and ends on the same foot.
Jump: A jump starts on two feet and usually ends on two feet.
I believe that this is my favourite part of playing with my children, I learn right along with them!
So back to the activity.  How did we learn how to move like this instead of mommy just yelling out the words?  We listened to Skip to My Lou.  During the course (Lou, lou, skip to my lou . . .) we travelled in a circle while holding hands.  When the verses came on (Flies in the buttermilk, etc.) we did different movements, like roll, jump, hop and turn.  As the verse ended, I would tell them to pause and they would stop what they were doing and come back to hold hands and we would dance together.  It was a lot of fun!


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