Dancing Words Blog

Tall Tall Tree by Anthony D. Fredericks

The 2017 publication of Tall Tall Tree (author Anthony D. Fredericks and illustrator Chad Wallace) is a delightful new book to try out with preschool, kindergarten, and first grade students. The book offers a variety of animal movements and also is a counting book - 1 eagle, 2 owls, 3 salamanders.... Tall Tall Tree explores the many different creatures that live within giant redwood trees.

Counting books like this one so nicely lend themselves to "parts" for a group dance. So if you have 20 or more students in a class, everyone can get one or two parts to the dance.

1 eagle (soaring, searching)

2 owls (carrying food, sharing, nesting)

3 salamanders (climbing, hunting)

4 woodpeckers (quick movements, pecking, storing food)

5 woodrats (darting, eating)

6 chipmunks (dashing, darting, scampering)

7 bumblebees (quickly zigging and zagging)

8 bats (sleeping, waiting, hanging)

9 banana slugs (sliding, sliming)

10 ladybugs (crawling, flying)

Tall Tall Tree is nicely bookended with clear beginning and ending text to help shape your dance. Teachers - you can be the narrator for the dance and literally read the whole story aloud to help shape and pace the dance.

As for music selections, try out "Brace Brace" by Bonobo, or "Blind Man, Blind Man" by Herbie Hancock.

Round by Joyce Sidman

Today we are excited to have SF Bay Area teaching artist Juliana Monin writing for Dancing Words.

My daughter received Round as a gift, and it’s filled with great images and ideas for dance. Written by Joyce Sidman and illustrated by Taeeun Yoo, Round is lyrical and dreamy, delighting in some of the ways we enjoy round things. It could be an excellent way to introduce a study of shape for preschool through 3rd grade.

Some inspirational images include: curving around round juicy oranges, round seeds quiet and still, swelling mushrooms, concentric rings of a tree stump, round ripples from rain drops onto water, and bubbles bursting.

One favorite page depicting dung beetles says, "I love to watch round things move. They are so good at it! Rolling, spinning, bouncing. I always wonder where they’re headed.” Students can practice rolling on pathways with varying speeds, being “rolled” by someone, or rolling singular body parts.

Another nice idea comes from two pages showing how water smooths out the edges of rocks over time. Students can practice several ways of transforming from angular shapes to curved ones.

Other pages about friends linking together to make round circles, or hugging a loved one, lend to partnering explorations about round - loose and round, low and round...How big a round shape can you make? How small? How are you connecting?

Round is sweet and serene, helping to remind us of the magic in our simple, natural, round world. I’ve been having fun dancing out some of these pages and think you will too.

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