After settling on doing Jingle Bells with them, I decided why don't we do a dance! Great for steady beat, and same/different. So, I quickly came up with a dance to go with the version of Jingle Bells I had (Frank Sinatra). Using this video as inspiration, I created a little dance for us to do.
Since I was planning on doing this with Kindergarten, I made some changes. We really have not done any dances before, I thought a circle would be a bit much. Can you imagine it? I could see kindergarteners crashing into each other while others called out "No go that way" "Nu-uh that way". :) So, instead we used scattered formation.
The Frank Sinatra recording is a bit different than the one in Dr. Amchin's video, so here is what I did with my little ones.
Formation: Scattered
Introduction - Still for 8 beats
32 beats - sway hips from side to side (This one gives me the giggles. If you try it you'll see what I mean!)
Jingle Bells - same as in the video, play the rhythm of the words, then walk hand in hand with your partner to the beat in any direction, repeat
32 beats - sway hips again
Wave Goodbye
I am sure this is probably not the most fantastic dance out there but the kids enjoyed it, great practice of steady beat and it didn't take long to teach. We were able to learn the dance and do half of the lesson I had originally planned.
If I had more time to work on it, I probably would go ahead and do the circle. I think my K kids could handle it with more time but this was one of those last minute things.
