Dancing Through the Day: Up + Down with Counting

Sunday, July 22, 2012

DANCING THROUGHOUT THE DAY 

Part 5:  Up and Down with Counting! -- A Movement Exploration Activity that Addresses Numbers and Counting

GO DOWN TO THE FLOOR SLOWLY AS I COUNT TO 10!

Hello EC Community,

I hope you are enjoying the summer, even as you are thinking about and planning for the upcoming school year!

As a way to further my passion for offering many different dance opportunities to children, this blog entry is the fifth in a series of activities based on the daily routine of young children.  They are simple and ready to use!

Today's entry, like last month's, is one that specifically addresses Early Childhood Learning Standards.  Today's activity is a short, fun transition activity that children love, and at the same time it is a chance for children to practice their counting skills.  Counting together, forward and backward, is incorporated into the movement.  It is also a quick and easy way to work on counting from one to ten in another language.

Use this when you want to bring the children from standing to sitting, or vice versa.  It is also a wonderful "brain break" as it is a short, lively burst of activity.  One of the best parts about it is that it can be done in a small space with no extra materials required.

Up and Down With Counting!

Adapted from Dance, Turn, Hop, Learn!  Enriching Movement Activities for Preschoolers  (Redleaf Press, 2006)

What You Need: No materials required

What You Do:

Begin with the children standing (or seated, in which case the children will slowly stand up as you begin counting) in a circle (or spread throughout the room if you have the space), at least arms' width apart from each other.  Before you start the activity, explain to the children how to go down to the floor:  they should catch themselves with their hands as they land on the floor, and not fall hard on their bottoms.  During the activity, they will go increasingly faster up and down, so this is an important safety precaution.

 Say to the children:

We are going to go down to the floor.  I will count to ten, and you will take all ten counts to get down.  That means you will have to move very slowly!  You may count (and clap) with me as you move.  Here we go:  1, 2, 3 (yes, move slowly!) 4, 5 (you should be halfway down now!). 6, 7, 8, 9 . . . 10!  Is everyone all the way down?  

Now we are going to go back up!  Let's go back up in 9 counts.  Everyone count with me:  1, 2, 3, (you should be about halfway up) 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 -- is everyone all the way back up?

Continue this until you get to "1."  Because the up and down gets increasingly faster, I always slow down a bit when I get to "1:"  Do you think you can go down and up in 1 count?  Remember to catch yourself at the bottom with your hands.  Here we go:  1!  (children go down to floor) 1!  (children stand up) 1! (children go down to floor) 1!  (children stand up).  The last one should bring the children where you want them to end up at the end of the transition activity, either standing or sitting.

CLAP AND COUNT ALONG WITH ME AS WE GO DOWN TO THE FLOOR!

Variation for forward and backward counting:  To help the children practice backwards counting, do the activity again, and count forward as they go down, and backward as they go up (like a rocket countdown).  

Variation for bilingual counting:  To work on counting in another language, simply do the activity again using the numbers in that language.

This activity has become a favorite among my students, and is a quick, fun, and lively transition activity while at the same time reinforcing counting skills.

NOW LET'S COME UP TO STANDING WHILE COUNTING BACKWARDS, LIKE A ROCKET TAKING OFF!

Next up in the DANCING THROUGHOUT THE DAY series: 

Part 6:  A Movement Exploration That Addresses Social Studies

Keep on Dancin',

Connie

MOVING IS LEARNING!

                                                             www.movingislearning.com

Copyright 2012, Connie Bergstein Dow

This post has been added to a 'bloghop' on all things MATH related for young children! 

ORGANIC MATERIALS AND LEARNING

MEANINGFUL LEARNING with 

ORGANIC MATERIALS

The world around us offers us so much to use to create learning opportunities with children. as my colleague Rachel so wonderfully points out in her article on creativity. So often as adults, we forget how much wonder and discovery exists in simple things.  We need to remind ourselves of all the ways to live like children.  As the founder of the F.A.M.E. Foundation I have the great pleasure of visiting hundreds of classrooms each year and working with thousands of teachers.  One of those classrooms is at an elementary school in the same neighborhood I grew up as a child. Below, you can see how children at this school used their hands, paint and some adult created questions to accomplish many things including:

• An organic piece of Art.
• A piece of Art that was made with teamwork.
• A piece of Art that tells the important story of how similar we are, despite some small differences.

USING ORGANIC MATERIALS and 

FOSTERING ENGINEERING SKILLS

From shells, to rocks, to feathers and more.... using organic materials offers many advantages including:

• they have shapes all their own that can connect to shapes we use throughout life
• they connect children to nature
• they produce curiosity, which in turns produces questions
• by producing questions, critical thinking is engaged
• low or even no cost

Below you can see a poster board of shapes made by children using dried bean pods and straw.  It's great to see that the teachers at this school are allowing the time for children to truly understand how to make the shapes themselves.  It's important to remind ourselves that children absorb a lot more and learn a great deal more when the learning they experience includes the journey of trial and error.  As a parent I can attest to the fact that it is so easy to give the answers away, instead of allowing for the time for deeply meaningful connections to be made by the child.

NUMBERS, NATURE and NUMERICAL LITERACY

In this same preschool children are supported in their experience of numbers in the following ways:

• Writing the number
• Finding something in nature that represents that number
• Writing the word that represents the number

Again, the journey of learning is embraced and oh what fun the children have!  Fun.... yes, FUN!!!  FUN IS NOT FLUFF as my fellow blogger Melissa points out in her fantastic article on creating rainbows with cars! Fun is simply where it's at, if we are interested in creating life long learners who embrace a life time of learning, playing and sharing.

Let's here it for the numbers 5, 6, and 7!  Below are three examples from 3, 4 and 5 year olds.

ORGANIC MATERIALS, DOCUMENTATION 

AND ASSESSMENT

Ahhhh.... we all love to document, right?  Well, not all of us and that's alright, but we all know it's important and the same can be said for assessment.  While we live in a world which many times over does it in these areas and many times forgets to document and assess some really important things, we need to find creative ways to document and assess.  Using organic materials as you've seen in this article is one way to find out what the children know in a play-based way!

Yes, documentation and assessment can be fun and you already know how I feel about that :)!  Below is a document I really love, especially the page on the left.  Enjoy and share!

CREATING ENVIRONMENTS FOR DISCOVERY AND LEARNING

Below is a fantastic photo of the many kinds of materials which can be used, from wire, to cork, and much more.  It is so helpful to create stimulating environments to help us find the interests of children.  This also allows for multiple ways for children to represent what they are learning.  Again, we need to remember to:

LIVE LIKE A CHILD!

ENGINEERS WANTED!

I used to think of the word "Engineer" as a boring word, because I didn't see myself as an Engineer, but I was wrong and I admit it.  Over the past couple of years I have been finding organic and artistic ways to connect learning to engineering skills with preschool and kinder children.  This is what I have observed.

• Engineers think!
• Engineers create!
• Engineers build!
• Engineers can be inventive!
• Engineers can be original!  
• Engineering is empowering!

I AM an Engineer!  I'm an Engineer of people and of music and I bet you're an Engineer of something as well.

Below is a "in the moment" photo of a young 4 year old exploring, building, creating....yes, this child is Engineering! 

Let's remind ourselves to not let our own preferences color the opportunities we offer our children.  We want them to experience all life has to offer so they can make their own decisions as they move along the wonderful, marvelous and magical road we call life.

 LIVE, LEARN, and TEACH LIKE A CHILD

March Match, Number Names Game

After reading these two books that make great March read-alouds, I was thinking about the ways they are alike and different.  St. Patrick's Day by Gail Gibbons is a nonfiction book, heavy on the facts.  I learned a few new things myself from this book.  Green Shamrocks is a animal fiction story (animal fantasy as the characters talk), and is rather silly.  Pages in both books are covered with green.  

Comparing and contrasting the two books, the Venn diagram looks something like this:

I was then thinking about Kindergarten and grade 1 learning different names for numerals, which also takes some comparing and contrasting.  At first it can be confusing to learn that a numeral has several different names.  People have different names, too, if we stop and think about it.  

Here are some names for a girl.  There is only one person, Molly, but she is called different names by different people:

Opps!  Can't leave the boys out . .  .

Here are some names for numbers (numerals):

Now here is my game of the month for PreK + K Sharing:

MARCH MATCH

Happy learning!