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Sara's Idea Page!
TEACHING ANATOMY THROUGH MOVEMENT
On Aug. 25, Sara and Erin presented a
workshop “Infusing Creative Movement and Creative Drama in Your K-5 Classroom”.
If you missed it, come in and talk to them about some of these great ideas!
They [children] dance before they learn there is
anything that isn’t music. Keepsakes:
William Stafford
Sara's Idea for Math
and the Arts......
Geometric Shapes
- a
Movement/Math Game
for grades K-3
from
Minds in Motion, by
Susan Griss
Materials/Student Groupings (grades K-3)
Elastic bands (enough for partners or groups of 3)
Lots
of space
Procedure:
-
With
students in a line behind the teacher, walk in the open space in
a particular geometric shape. At each angle in the shape, make an
exaggerated turn, encouraging students to follow.
-
When the
shape is completed by the last student, have the group guess
what the shape was. Do several more shapes
-
With
children as leaders of smaller groups, have them skip, jump, slide
gallop, hop, etc. different shape patterns.
-
Have
smaller groups move to each of the corners of the space, call out
a name, a movement and a shape: “Suzy, hop in a square shape”, or
“Tim, slide in the shape of a triangle.”
-
Using the
elastic bands tied for individual students or partners/groups,
have students climb inside and use their bodies to stretch into
specific geometric shapes.
Performing Arts:
- Content Standard 2: Uses
dance, music, theatre/drama, and visual arts to express ideas.
- Content Standard 3: Integrate understanding of
visual and performing arts by seeking connections and parallels among arts
cisciplines as well as all other content areas.
- Content Standard 4: Demonstrate an understanding
of the dynamics of the creative process.
Math: Strand III: Geometry,
Spatial Sense and Measurement
K-5 Benchmark: The student explores and uses
two-and three-dimensional shapes and understands their locations and
transformations in the spatial plane. The student identifies, transforms, and
builds shapes.
Dance is a movement, but without movable joints, dance would
be impossible! I wrote this activity and poem for third graders to
help in their lesson on types of joints to remind us of how important they are.
Start by showing a model of a skeleton and
pointing out the spine, gliding joints, hinge joints and ball and socket joints.
Warm-up: Using background
music with a good beat, ask students to move each set of joints as you name
them: When each set is complete, have the students
FREEZE and return to a resting position.
First - fingers, wrists (and fingers), elbows (and
wrists and fingers), shoulders (and wrists, fingers, elbows)
... FREEZE
Next, repeat for toes, ankles (and
toes), knees ..., hips ....
FREEZE
Repeat for head, whole spine ...
FREEZE
And now, everything together ...
FREEZE
This activity may
be done as one group, 2-4 subgroups as space permits, or groups of two or three
can each take one stanza. Movers
should spread out evenly in the space available.
The rest are the (well-mannered) audience (then switch groups)
Instructions: Listen as the poem is read and put your own
movements to the actions in the poem.
One rule: Keep to your own space--NO TOUCHING EACH
OTHER
Our Skeleton
Our skeleton, it serves us well
In many, many, ways.
It helps us when we’re doing work
It helps us dance a phrase.
And should we choose to kick or catch
Or throw or swing a bat
Our skeleton is there to help.
How does it manage that?
With bones that if you count them
Number two hundred and six,
And muscles, tendons, ligaments--
A complicated mix.
But something else to talk about
Before we close the book,
Are joints that make it possible
To bend. Let’s take a look…
The spine: it is a masterpiece,
An engineering feat!
With bones that stack like building blocks
With padding where they meet.
It lets you roll down forward
Till your fingers touch the floor
And then it brings you back up straight,
Ready for some more.
It sends your head in orbit
Like a planet round the sun
Or lets your hips go hula hooping
‘round and ‘round for fun.
It lets you twist from left to right
It spins you right around
It lets you slither like a snake
Upon the grassy ground.
It’s fabulously flexible
It’s very fine for sure.
You might enjoy a little time
Play with it some more.
Now moving on, our shoulders have
A socket and a ball.
They let your arms reach up and out
Across and that’s not all
They let you pick an apple,
Pear, a pepper or a peach
The only problem is that itch
You never seem to reach.
And when you’re done with tennis,
Golf and catching lightning bugs,
The nicest thing your shoulders do
Is give some friendly hugs.
Now your hips, just like your shoulders,
Use the same old ball and socket.
They let you do karate kicks,
And jump just like a rocket.
They let you bicycle for miles,
Up mountains and back down
They let you run a marathon
Or Charleston like a clown.
And the chorus line that kicks so high,
(they’re known as the Rockettes)
They never could have done that
Without ball-joints with sockets
Just one more thing before we go
To you I must relate
Wrists, elbows, fingers, knees, and feet
Have hinges like a gate.
A simple swinging action
With so many applications
They let us play piano drive a car
And take vacations
Where we swim and boat and fish and feast
(Thank heavens for our elbows
That let our forks reach to our mouths
Unlike our canine fellows)
They let us do the rumba, bomba,
Twist and macarena
The jitterbug, the hokey pokey
Monkey and rueda,
So give some special thought
To skeletal articulations
They let you work, eat, dance, and play.
Dear joints, congratulations!!
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