When you and your students explore the letter O, these books can be springboards and inspiration for improvisations and dance projects.
O is for Opposites
Opposites are always a wonderful concept to explore in movement. I love the picture book A High, Low, Near, Far, Loud, Quiet Story by Nina Crews. (You can find used copies on amazon.com.) Use the words to create a simple warm up or improv activity, or create a dance with the entire text.
O is for Ocean
I love finding pictures books that can easily create an improv structure.
Robert Neubecker's book has sparse text, but dense images of a day at the ocean. The main character, Izzy, heads to the beach one day. With each turn of the page, she explores another aspect of the beach and ocean world – tide pools, shells, fish, sting rays, and coral reefs. There is even a sunken ship.
You could set up an improv that could be repeated several times in your dance classes. With each page, the students could be exploring that environment (ex. dancing through a coral reef) or be that environment or animal (ex. move like sharks). Each spread begins with the word "wow" ("Wow! Tide pool!…..Wow! Fish!"). The word "wow" could be the cue for students to pause to get ready to transition to the next idea.
Water Sings Blue: Ocean Poems is one of favorite children's poetry books to use in dance classes. The poetry is by Kate Coombs, with illustrations by Meilo So. Both text and paintings are full of magic, whimsy, and imagery to inspire movement with students.
From start to finish, the poems take you on a journey along the shore and in the water. Topics include: sand, tide pools, waves, jellyfish, squid, and coral. The poems lend themselves to a variety of projects for both small groups (solos and duets) and whole group vignettes. You could easily use all or most poems in the book to create a beautiful performance with your class.
O is for Orange
To explore the color orange, you can pull out all of your books about colors. Four examples include: My Many Colored Days, Colour, Living Color, and The Rainbow Book. What are our associations with orange? How can we translate these ideas into movement? Ideally, see if you can pull out 3-5 books on color. Look at the orange pages, and then explore movement ideas related to these pages. You can even string the 3-5 ideas together.
Using Your Book Bin of Alphabet Books
As I suggested in the first post of this alphabet series, creating a book bin of alphabet books is a great idea. For example with the letter O, look at all of the "O pages" in your bin. Have students pair up, and give each pair one alphabet book. Ask them to find the O page. What movement or shape can they create related to that page? Give each pair a chance to share in front of the class. Again, you can string all of the ideas together to create an "O Dance."
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