Amy Call Arts Bridge

Teaching this lesson today was so much fun! The second the kids got to class, they were ready to dance and could not stop jumping for joy. Most of the students caught on very quickly to dancing out each number and wanted to bolt ahead and solve higher numbered math problems...I was very impressed. I was originally going to use dice for the end of the lesson, but switched to dominos at the last minute because I thought it would be quicker, and thankfully it was! The kids loved volunteering to pick a domino and solve addition problems using the numbers that were on them. Throughout the semester we have also been working on raising their hands and thinking of answers by themselves before calling them out and I must say, they have gotten so much better at that. Overall, I was very pleased with the kids quickness to pick up the material, as well as their ability to be challenged with math and dance at the same time.

Today and last week I worked with the AM and PM Kindergarten on dancing the ABC's. We started with a fun alphabet song that only says the sounds of each letter. The kids would then create a shape with their body that matched the letter that the sound was making. They did pretty well, especially because the song moved quickly. This part of the lesson was my favorite and I believe it was the kids favorite as well. (The ideas here were adapted from Jana Shumway) I showed the kids a letter and they would call out what letter it was. Then they would make the sound the letter makes. Each letter also had a dance word associated with that letter. We would then dance out that word. For example, the dance word for the letter S was skip, so we would skip around the room as a class. The dance word for the letter T was twist, so we would make a twisting shape as a class. The kids were very enthusiastic about this lesson because they know the alphabet fairly well. They could use some mo