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  • Alphabet Series: The Letter B

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    When you and your students explore the letter B, some of these books can be springboards and inspiration for improvisations and dance projects. 

    Let's Bounce!

    If you work with preschoolers, bouncing is such a fun action to explore. How can you bounce in place….traveling in the room……with a friend? There are three books to read on bouncing:

    1. Bounce by Doreen Cronin and Scott Menchin

    2. Bouncing Time by Patricia Hubbell and Melissa Sweet

    3. Emily Loves to Bounce by Stephen Michael King

    Bones

    You might talk about the bones of the body, improvise using bone vocabulary, or make a dance or warm up to the spiritual "Dem Bones." Check out….

    Bones: Skeletons and How They Work by Steve Jenkins

    Dem Bones by Bob Barner

    Butterflies

    As for exploring butterflies or the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly, the newer book A Butterfly is Patient, by Dianna Hutts Aston and illustrator Sylvia Long, is a beautiful picture book with movement-evoking larger text on each spread and elegant illustrations.

    Bridges

    Another great B word to try out in the body is building bridges. Whether you explore in partners or small groups, use the book Bridges Are to Cross by Philemon Sturges and artist Giles Laroche. (Find used copies for sale on amazon.com or visit your library.)

    Blue

    To explore the color blue, 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 blue? How can we translate these ideas into movement? Ideally, see if you can pull out 3-5 books on color. Look at the blue pages, and then explore movement ideas related to these pages. You can even string the 3-5 ideas together.

    Ballet Books

    Last, as you explore the letter B, there are many books at the local library on ballet. One of my personal favorites is Rachel Isadora's alphabet book On Your Toes: A Ballet ABC. Other great ballet books are Bea at Ballet (also by Rachel Isadora) and Beautiful Ballerina, by Marilyn Nelson with photographs by Susan Kuklin. 

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  • Book to Boogie Blog: Fortunately by Remy Charlip

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    The Book to Boogie Series is another great blog to check out. Here is the recent post that explores a favorite of mine, Fortunately by Remy Charlip.

    Click here.

     

  • Wow! Ocean!

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    I love finding pictures books that can easily create an improv structure. Wow! Ocean! can be explored with preschool students and K-2 students.

    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.

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    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. 

    Have fun exploring ocean life with this book!

     

  • Magic and Whimsy Series: Questions, Questions

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    How do seeds know how to grow, to reach up from the earth below? Who paints the colors on the flowers that lift their heads to sun and showers? What turns the rain on in the sky and brings the sun to make things dry?

    If this poetic text peeks your interest, read on. Marcus Pfister's 2011 picture book Questions, Questions could be the book you are looking for this fall as you build a class dance with students in grades 3-5. In a similar vain to the Caretakers of Wonder (Cooper Evans), Pfister poses lots of great questions that will lead to interesting movement phrases with upper elementary age students. You can assign some of the pages to small groups, and other pages will lend themselves to whole-group explorations (How many shells are on the shore? How many little fish might see the stone I throw into the sea?).

    You, as the teacher, can be the narrator for the piece. Or, record yourself or the students reading the text.

    Questions, Questions beautifully explores many aspects of the natural world – plants, animals, and weather.

     

     

     

  • This is the Rain

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    I love the theme of water and have explored it in many ways over the past 16 years in dance classes varying from preschool through 7th grade. Students explore the actions of water, the water cycle, forms of water, and more.

    This summer at the library, I found the book This is the Rain by Lola M. Schaefer and illustrator Jane Wattenberg. This is the Rain is a cumulative story, like The House That Jack Built, where the story gets built upon. 

    As for movement inspiration, the book talks about the water cycle and the many forms/states of water. The use of repetition in the text is a great way to explore repetition in your dance class.

    I encourage dance teaching artists, classroom teachers, and science teachers working with students in grades K-3 to check out this book. You can purchase used copies on amazon.com. 

    *Also, please note, I added the category of "water" in the column to the right here. There are numerous books on the theme to explore in elementary dance classes.

  • Exploring Pathways with K-3 Students

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    I asked several colleagues for their favorite picture books on pathways, and all of us were somewhat stumped on this subject area. To date, there are still few books to be used as springboards when exploring lines and pathways with elementary age students. 

    Today, I want to highlight the four we came up with. Clearly, there is room for more books on this theme! I recommend checking them out of your local library and purchasing used copies online. My top pick from the list is Little Green.

    1. Little Green by Keith Baker (get regular copy, not board book version)

    A hummingbird – making various pathways in space (zig zag, curlycue, etc)

    2. Jonathan and His Mommy by Irene Smalls and Michael Hays

    A son and mother taking a walk and exploring all different ways to walk – big steps, small steps, zig zag pathways

    3. Lines that Wiggle by Candace Whitman and Steve Wilson

    An artistic exploration of lines that wiggle, bend, spiral, curve, etc.

    4. Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson

    An imaginative tale of a little boy drawing his world around him – the path he takes, the moon in the air, and much more to create an adventure

  • Repost: Flora and the Flamingo (Now a Caldecott Honor Book!)

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    The folks at Chronicle Books (one of my favorite book publishers) have released another playful picture book to inspire young ones to dance. 

    Flora and the Flamingo, by Molly Idle, is a wordless picture book with two characters – a young girl and a flamingo. Both wear their "pink costumes," ready for dancing.

    The story is a playful dialogue of a friendship forming. In movement terms, it is a fun way to introduce the ideas of follow the leader, mirroring, and call and response with students in preschool, kindergarten, and first grade.

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    Share this book within a creative dance or pre-ballet class, or purchase it for your your one who loves to dance. The beauty of wordless books is that they encourage us to ask the kids, "What is happening here? What's the story? What do you think?"

    Check out the Chronicle Books website for two reasons.

    1. There is a "book trailer" that shows you all of the pages of the book. It is set to the classical piece, "By the Beautiful Blue Danube" by Johann Strauss II. Watching this trailer inspired me to want to use this particular piece of music when using this book.

    2. Also, orders over $25 receive free shipping this week. (Chronicle publishes lots of inspiring books for dance classes, including the new book on Josephine Baker, Josephine.)

    Flora and the Flamingo will lead to multiple movement possibilities. What a great way to start doing work in pairs/duets with young ones. One dancer can be the role of Flora, and one dancer can be the role of the flamingo. I also love the use of color in the book, and it inspires me to want to bring in large pieces of pink fabric with the kids as well. (Pink tulle is very inexpensive, and then you can give each student a yard of fabric.) Pick out several of the images and ask the students to make the same shapes in their bodies ("see and do").

    Have fun and play!

     

  • Alphabet Series: The Letter A

    When you and your students explore the letter A, some of these books can be springboards and inspiration for improvisations and dance projects. 

    A is for AROUND

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    I am always looking for books and stories with prepositions. Check out this picture book about plants and gardens - Up, Down, and Around by Katherine Ayres and illustrator Nadine Bernard Westcott. It will inspire a fun warm up and get students thinking about relationships in space.

    A is for ANIMALS

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    You can do an entire dance class with animal inspiration – shapes, actions, traveling patterns, levels, tempo, and much more. Books to investigate include:

    A is for AUTUMN LEAVES

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    Autumn Leaves by Ken Robbins is a beautiful picture book with vibrant photos of leaves. You and your students can explore the shapes of the leaves in a warm up exercise. Add some of the classic "autumn music" as well – the jazz standard "Autumn Leaves" or the Autumn section from Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

    A is for ARTISTS ALVIN AILEY AND ALICIA ALONSO

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    You can also share biographies about modern dancer Alvin Ailey and prima ballerina Alicia Alonso:

  • Nutcracker Series: Book by Alison Jay

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    Yes, it is July, and I am writing about The Nutcracker! I believe that it is never too early to be thinking of your classes and units of study in the coming months.

    We got this version of The Nutcracker out of the library the other week, and my 5 year old son has asked for me to read this to him almost every day. He hasn't even seen The Nutcracker yet, but I already have plans in the works to take him to see the San Francisco Ballet in December….

    Alison Jay is known for her distinctive artwork and its "crackled painting" appearance. Her version of the Nutcracker tale is easy to read and accessible for young ones. Over the coming months, I will review various versions of the Nutcracker story.

    Between the artwork and reasonable length text, this book is a great version to share with students in PreK-3rd grade as you explore this classic story from the ballet.

    The Nutcracker by Alison Jay

     

  • Alphabet Series: Alphabet Book Bin (Updated January 2020)

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    I love book bins within preschool and kindergarten classes. They offer many options around a particular subject. Today I want to share the idea of having an alphabet book bin within your classroom or studio – whether you are a preschool teacher, dance teacher at a studio, kindergarten teacher, or dance teaching artist in an elementary school.

    Listed below is a great selection of alphabet books that can lead to a fun closing or opening activity in a dance class. Let me explain how this might work. Let's say you teach dance at a preschool. Let's say that the students are exploring the letter M this week. You can gather the students around you and the book bin. Select 3-4 books from the bin. Look at the M pages within these books. You and the students might begin class by making shapes in your bodies inspired by the images, or by exploring the action words in the books for the letter M. 

    If you look at the M page in 4-6 different books, use Post-It notes to mark the pages. After practicing a movement or shape for each page, as a group make an order for the ideas to build a simple phrase. Write the order and key words on chart paper or a dry erase board for easy reference.

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    From A Garden of Ordinary Miracles

    You can repeat this same activity each week or every few weeks. 

     

    Here is my list for a book bin, with a variety of books about animals, flowers, food, actions, and dance specific vocabulary:

    2. A Dictionary of Dance by Harriet Ziefert and illustrator Liz Murphy

    3. On Your Toes: A Ballet ABC by Rachel Isadora

    4. Alphabet Movers by Teresa Benzwie

    5. ABC Yoga by Christiane Engel

    6. Alphabreaths: The ABCs of Mindful Breathing by Christopher Willard and Daniel Rechtschaffen, with illustrator Holly Clifton-Brown

    8. ABCers by Carole Lexa Schaefer and illustrator Pierr Morgan

    9. Roar Like a Dandelion by Ruth Krauss and illustrator Sergio Ruzzier

    10. From A to Z with Energy! by Connie Bergstein Dow and illustrator Gareth Llewhellin

    11. Alphamals A-Z by Graham Carter

    12. Animal Action ABC by Karen Pandell and photographers Art Wolfe and Nancy Sheehan

    13. Into the A, B, Sea by Deborah Lee Rose and Steve Jenkins

    14. Creature ABC by Andrew Zuckerman

    15. African Animal Alphabet (National Geographic Little Kids) by Beverly and Dereck Joubert

    16. The New Alphabet of Animals by Christopher Wormell

    17. 8: An Animal Alphabet by Elisha Cooper

    18. Eating the Alphabet by Lois Ehlert

    20. An ABC of Flowers by Jutta Hilpuesch

    21. ABC Dream by Kim Krans

    22. A B See by Elizabeth Doyle

    23. ABC Love by Christiane Engel

    24. Today I Feel: An Alphabet of Feelings by Madalena Moniz

    If you search for these books on amazon.com, many can be purchased used for very reasonable prices. Your school librarian might also allow you to keep a set of books in your room for a few weeks at a time.

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