Seriously Silly Songs

Have you ever seen these books by Sandra Boynton? I love them. It's a book and CD pair and they are seriously silly! I use them in almost all of my movement classes with young ones. My favorite are Barnyard dance (animal dance) and Loud and Quiet (see below), it's great to teach opposites with!
My other favorite part about these books is that in the back the songs are written out so you can play them on the piano! My pianist loves (loves!) to play the Dinosaur Round. I teach levels as she plays!
I find the books a reason to be silly, and you all know little kids LOVE to be silly! What silly songs do you use? I would love to hear!

The Animal Boogie

This week in my preschool classes I introduced this book, The Animal Boogie! It comes with a CD to dance to and does a really great job of introducing movement words such as shake, flap, leap, and swing. After we do the dance through the book, I ask the kids what their favorite animal was and if they can remember the word the animal moved too. It has a catchy tune too!

"shake, shake, boogie, woogie, oogie"

Barefoot Books has more books like this one, perhaps I will put them on my wish list! Have you tried this book in preschool? Have you tried any new books lately that the kids love?

Bugs

Today was a very silly day! I taught science! Silly Science that is! It was so fun. I filled in for a teacher who had an emergency, but it turned out to be such a great experience. All the kids were 2 and so very talkative. The theme was bugs! We read The Hungry Caterpillar and then used magnifying glasses to search for bugs around the room. They were so cute looking through the glass! Even though it was science, you better believe I incorporated some movement into the lesson. We slept in our cocoon and then became beautiful butterflies, just like in the story. They wanted to do it over and over, before I knew it, I had to remind myself that it wasn't a movement class. It just shows how much little ones' imagination soar when they move their bodies.

Next week I think I will explore bugs with my creative movement classes! How would you move like a ladybug? How many different types of bugs do you think you could dance about? I am sure the kids could think of more than I could!

Searching for Stories

This week I got an e-mail from Barnes and Noble with a coupon for children's books. (half off the second one!) So guess what I have been doing today? Looking up amazing stories to use with my preschool creative movement classes. So so fun, but I must say pretty time consuming and a little difficult since you can't see the whole book. Here are a few that caught my eye!

It Looked Like Spilt Milk, by Charles G. Shaw- I kept going back to this book which means I think I need to purchase it! How fun would this be to go through all the pictures and make the shapes of the spilt milk? From the cover alone I can think of about 10 shapes and 5 dances to explore! I am thinking young dancers would love this! Great visuals and clear objectives. I can't wait to try it out!

Saturday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp, by: Carol Diggory Shields- A little over a week ago I wrote a post on a dinosaur dance I did with my preschoolers. While I was searching for books I remembered a few people recommending this book in the past. I am thinking the boys class will love it, and perhaps they can help me with all the tricky dinosaur names that I won't be able to pronounce! Hmmm... I probably won't get this by Tuesday. If it makes it, I will try it out next week and report back!

Do you search for books to use with your students? What are your favorites? I would love to exchange lists!