Line Dancing

I have recently discovered the facebook page Segni Mossi and have been really inspired about how they have been working with music and movement with children.

SO MANY ideas that I can adapt and use to weave into how my group of children are exploring stories and listening at the moment... and also from a philosophical point of view... a way to explore similarities and differences - to learn and be inspired from each other.

Yesterday the children lined up in front of the mirror with a very waxy crayon - the crayon was placed in the hand of the child furthest to the right and the idea was to draw a line - straight wiggly, however you wanted in the area in front of you, and then pass it on to the next child who would continue the line until the line had traversed the mirror.
I pointed out that the line went in the same direction as some written languages (right to left)... and as we have one child with Arabic in the home this was the language I illuminated.

The children then backed away from the mirror and took it in turns to follow the line with their bodies...

At first children were using their hands to trace the line in the air... but after a while one child danced her way across the floor to imitate the line and from then on the children were using more and more of their bodies.

This activity I see is a great way to practice listening... taking turns, being observant of what others are doing, incorporating elements of others' interpretations to enhance your own...
This was an activity with great joy.

Some children did not want to follow the line at first - they wanted to observe for a while... I got the feeling there was a nervousness... would I do it wrong? But it soon became apparent that there was no wrong way to do this... only many different ways to express your own thinking about how the line moved across the mirror... in the end all the children tried except for one, but that felt more in keeping with a phase at the moment of doing the opposite of everyone else... am I allowed NOT to do something?

This activity can be extended... maybe with music and each child takes it in turns to listen to the music and draw a line across the mirror that inteprets how they hear the music... and then everyone interprets the line...

Would we use different music for each child, orthe same... or different nature sounds or.... well there are so many possibilities with just this activity alone...


And yes... that is me with some strange elven hat on... the children were in fits of giggles - and could not work out whether or not I was a fairy or Baba Yaga (the story we have of Baba Yaga is of a forest creature who is misunderstood as a horrible witch, when in fact she takes care of the forest and longs to be a babuschka)