Shake, Shimmy, & Dance: 7/19

It’s summer time again, which means eight weeks straight of Shake, Shimmy, & Dance!

The Plan

Book
Nose to Toes, You Are Yummy by Karen Beaumont
This is a very similar book to Eric Carle’s From Head to Toe and a positive addition to the Shake, Shimmy books. I had a lot of babies in the audience today and we talked about how this could be modified for babies by touching the body part that the book is talking about. Also, any book that gives a chance to reaffirm children that they are loved is a plus in my book.

Props
Parachute!

The Playlist

Hello & How Are You? — Old Town School of Folk Music
Kidquake! — The Not-Its
If You’re Happy and You Know It — Songs for Wiggleworms
Mr. Eric’s Jumping Song — The Learning Groove
Reach for the Sky — Fresh Beat Band
Popcorn — Joanie Leeds
Fast and Slow — Laurie Berkner
Take the Sun — Caspar Babypants
Shake Hands With Friends — Ella Jenkins

How It Went

A very bizarre attendance spike happened today. Last week, we hit a low of only 51 in attendance. This normally happens in July between the hot weather and families taking vacations before school starts again in August. But today, I had 81 in attendance. Thumbs up!

For our first song “Kidquake”, I had kids dance until they heard the word SHAKE and then they were encouraged to shake their hands or bodies. The next two songs both have instructions in them and we followed them. I made sure to tell caregivers that “Mr. Eric’s Jumping Song” was a harder song for the preschoolers in the audience. If their child could only jump/bounce, that was perfectly fine.

And then I had the best parachute day I’ve had. We popped crumpled up white paper popcorn on the chute to “Popcorn”; shook fast and slow during “Fast and Slow”; and raised the parachute up and down while the kids went underneath during “Take the Sun”. My caregivers were AWESOME during the clean-up of the parachute and really helped the kids. I need to get more paper popcorn going though because I had to go under the chute to help it stop gathering in one particular spot.

(For an example of the Powerpoint and handouts that I made for each Shake, Shimmy please visit the original post.)