5 activities for Early Years

Guest blogpost by Artis Specialist and Mentor Caroline Hotchkiss (Toot)

At Artis training last term, Louise Klarnett delivered a brilliant workshop on dance and the Early Years. These are the 5 activities I most enjoyed:

• Feathers 1. Create a line with masking tape on the floor; in partners the children sit on either side of the line facing each other with their feather on the line. On the signal, and staying behind the line, ask the children to blow the feather past their partner.

• Feathers 2. Four volunteers stand in front of the class in a statue of a bird; carefully the children place their feather onto the statue.

• Elastic band circle. Elastic band or scrunchy big enough to go round a circle of 30-35 children holding it. Every other child stands up out of the circle. Session leader asks the children to go under and over the elastic asking, where are we? Children reply inside or outside appropriately. Leader continues: ‘We can run’, children run round; ‘We can hide’, children hide behind children holding elastic; ‘We can peep’, children peep out from behind friend in the circle.

• 4 way stretch cloth. Children sit around the edges of a square cloth and pull it tight and bounce the cloth in time to music. Place bean bags on the cloth, the children watch the bean bags fly with the music.

• Pizza Massage. The leader uses the story and hand movements of making a pizza from scratch to guide the children through partner massage: knead dough, smear tomato sauce, chop/slice ingredients, sprinkle with cheese, dot on the olives.

Artis Specialists on the elastic band circle