Music and Motion Dance Party!

For those of you who have never read Angie Manfredi's fantastic blog, I highly recommend it. Both as a feminist, a lady of size, and a children's librarian. Seriously, she is awesome! (http://fatgirlreading.com/)

So, naturally, I have added her to my RSS feed. And I happened upon this great post about what she calls Music and Movement Dance Party programs. http://fatgirlreading.com/?s=music+and+movement

Her program was originally geared toward babies and grew into an all family type dealio. I used her structure as a template and adapted it to my preschool storytime crew. They loved it!

I do 3 preschool storytimes a week to accommodate all schedules. And I got comments in every one of them about how the kids had fun, and that it was a nice change of pace from regular storytimes. I am now planning on continuing the program in October, taking a break in November, and doing a Jingle Bell Rock Dance Party in December. If I keep getting the type of response I did this week, I may make it a monthly program henceforth.

A few things to note: Since this is a very physical program, the kids can get tired. I added a slow sit-down rhythm sticks song in the middle to keep up the energy and let everyone rest a bit. It's also a shorter program than storytime (I had 27mins of songs including an entrance and exit song, and pauses for instructions). But the parents and kids seemed fine with this, especially since the free dance song at the end was so much fun.

Some parents danced with their kids and some did not. I made sure to tell everyone that participation was entirely up to them. If they got tired and wanted to leave, or sit our the rest of the program with mom or dad, that was cool! Some kids sat and watched the whole time. Some came up and got scarves or rhythm sticks, but sat in the parent's lap to play with them. All this was totally fine.

They had a blast! I had a blast! One little boy came to all 3 programs. So if you like to try new things with your storytime group, I highly recommend this program, with all kudos due to Ms. Manfredi!