# 6 Creative Dance Wk 1

I cant believe I forgot to blog yesterday. I was so busy with conference, family in town and working on a key assignment for another class that it slipped my mind. I woke up at 2:30 this morning in a panic. Creative dance is my favorite of the arts. I have seen first hand how it can change a persons understanding including my self. When I had EDEL3400 we took a test at the biggng of the year on all the elements of dance. I bomb it so the teacher let any of us that had scored below a 60 something take it again. This time I made up a dance that I could do sitting down to help me remember everything from the test. This time I passed with flying colors.

What: When I first took the Dance for Elementary Teacher EDEL 3400. I thought it would be doing specific dance steps that the teacher showed the students. I was surprised and scared to learn that the teacher is a facilitator and the students use their own creativity and problem solving skills to create their own dance. That is exactly why creative dance is so important. It helps the students to develop the skills of problem solving, working together, it gets their creative juices flowing and helps them to more deeply understand the concepts being taught.

So What: In my preparation for next week I will get ideas from both our creative arts book and my dance for elementary teacher’s books. I will find a picture book that works well with science. Math and Science can sometimes be the hardest concepts to grasp, but when I child uses all their senses including touch and movement the ideas can penetrate more deeply. For field work it will be a little more difficult because we don’t know what the teacher wants us to do. But thank goodness creative dance just like all the other arts can be used for any subject and any grade.

Now What: To incorporate this knowledge and skill into practice I will first practice on my own children and their friends. My nine year old and twelve year old are always brutally honest with me. I love practicing on them. I also ask them what kind of things their teachers are doing with them. Finally I will ask my corporative teacher what kind of things has worked for her.