Second graders have been working hard on their Mindfulness and Yoga unit. Each class we practice a Mindful Schools lesson, journal about our practice, move our body through yoga poses, connect with our friends through silly games, and calm down through a final relaxation. Above you'll see two classmates communicating through non-verbal language which was loads of giggles, hilarious misunderstandings, and fun!
What FUN we had in our Decatur Dance 3-5 after school class! This group of students improved in every challenging skill I threw at them, learned lighting skills, worked together well as a team, and co-choreographed an energetic dance. Great work, Dancers!
First graders worked on formations today. At first, each group had to copy the formation cards that Ms. Branch assigned, but by the end of class each group was creating their own! If you have ever worked on a team to create something, you know how many collaboration skills it takes to come to a final product. We also read "The Most Magnificent Thing" by Ashley Spires to get our mindset right as we prepare to create our own dances. We may not love every draft of the dance we create, but with perseverance and hard work we will create something magnificent!
During our first yoga class of the year, second graders worked together to answer the question, "What do you feel when you are in harmony with yourself and others?" We had an exciting day setting up our yoga mats, getting our mindfulness journals, and getting to create our own safe spaces internally to begin the work of self-awareness, regulation, and building community as a class!
First Graders are choreographing dances in partners! We started with a floor map with three types of pathways: zig-zag, straight, and curved. Now we are creating dance moves for each pathway to memorize, rehearse, and perform for each other! The students are concentrating on working kindly and efficiently with their partner.
Huge congratulations are in order to our 3rd graders who wrapped up a huge unit on Ballet! They now can perform an entire Ballet class in French and have improved their skills so much! Great work, 3rd grade!
Using props has been a ton of fun in Kindergarten! We are just wrapping up our time using scarves and it has been so fun to draw shapes, learn to balance it on different body parts, move to different speeds of music, and explore creatively moving with this prop! Every Kindergartener is now a prop master as we have learned how to treat props with respect throughout class!
Exciting learning happening in the dance room as we learn to set up, program, and strike our new lights with our lighting board. Dancers are becoming lighting technicians as they learn all about the production element.
Gotta give a quick shout out to this 4th Grade class right here! They have been studying Modern Dance, which is a very physically challenging dance genre and have been working so hard! We have added at least 20 new skills to our body's physical memory and an in depth understanding of our pelvis, spine, and skeletal system. Great work, 4th Grade dancers!
Third graders have been learning Ballet these past few weeks and we tested our French-English translations by using flash cards this week in Dance. We loved the challenge of not only testing our ability to translate from language to language, but also perform each of the moves!
