Planting Seeds

The season of spring provides many themes and topics for inspiration in dance classes.

Here I would like to recommend two books about seeds/plants to use for springboards for improvising with students or for creating a dance (preschool, kindergarten, and first grade).

A Seed is Sleepy by Dianna Hutts Aston and illustrator Sylvia Long is a gorgeous picture book with beautiful, poetic language to inspire movement (slow movement, traveling movement, unfolding movement). The text is "dense" for younger children, but each page includes some larger text that can become your key words for your lesson.

Up, Down, and Around is a favorite of mine. I seek out picture books that use prepositional and relational words. With repetitive, playful text the books talks about plants and roots moving up and down (and around).