Fun Friday: Dance Party

I was going to go with a mock Caldecott event for my Fun Friday program last week. But at the last minute, decided to change the plan to have a dance party… The kids are at that point in the school year where they need a break and don’t want to sit still anymore. So rather than sitting and looking through beautiful picture books, we danced and moved for 45 minutes.
It was an interesting program and it took a little while for a lot of the kids to relax and become comfortable with dancing in the group. It seemed that the kids did better with “direction-based” sings like The Cha-Cha Slide, The Hokey Pokey, and The Freeze Dance. The kids liked The Cha-Cha Slide so much that I think we broke our CD in the process, thankfully we were able to listen to other songs and make it work. I also had songs by Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and other artists, specifically using the Kidz Bops versions so we didn’t have to worry about the lyrics.
Overall, I think most of the kids had fun, I was surprised that so many were hesitant to just let loose and dance, but I’m glad we had the chance for them to blow off some steam and if they learned even a little about how fun dancing is and you don’t have to worry what others think, that I’m happy. And before you ask, I danced for 45 minutes straight with the kids, I think seeing how silly I dance helped some of them come out of their shell a little.
If anyone’s interested, I can post or email you my playlist for the program. We ended up with 26 kids from first – fourth grade at the program.