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Round Valley Arts Curriculum
| KINDERGARTEN DANCE |
I. ARTISTIC PERCEPTION AND RESPONSE
Students become aware of themselves, space, time, energy,
and the power of dance to communicate ideas and feelings. As they dance, watch,
and talk about performances and their own experiences, they increase their awareness
of:
The Body
1. Identifying and moving single body parts.
2. Moving combinations of body parts.
3.
Making shapes with the body (round, wide, bent, straight, narrow).
Time
1.
Moving to even beats with fast and slow tempos.
Space (around the body)
1. Creating open and closed spaces.
2. Respecting other's space.
3. Using spatial concepts: high, low, large, small, and so on.
Energy
1. Creating sequences of movement that flow.
Students become aware of themselves, space, and time.
Students are exposed to the following terms:
|
beats |
shape |
fast |
space |
energy |
|
narrow |
slow |
open |
flow |
straight |
|
rhythm |
closed |
continuous |
wide |
tempo |
|
freeze |
large |
II. CREATIVE EXPRESSION
Students communicate observations, feelings, ideas and
experiences about things in their own world. Students engage in exercises and
complete dances as part of learning the following:
|
Strength/Fluidity |
Use gross and refined motor skills, focusing on
eight basic locomotor skills: walk, run, jump, gallop, hop, skip, slide,
and leap. Put these skills into rhythmic phrases (long/short, fast/slow).
Stimulate with images from the students' world: pushing a grocery cart,
walking on a curb, playing hopscotch, chasing a kitten. |
|
Dancers' Practices |
Healthy practices, e.g., good nutrition and adequate
rest |
|
Improvisation |
Focus spontaneous individual and group responses to sounds (loud/soft, short/sustained), music (varied qualities and styles), and tactile sensations (rough/smooth; prickly/furry). |
|
Abstraction |
Invent movements in response to imagined situations and remembered experiences of nature, weather, sun, clouds, animals, and everyday activities. Stimulate with images from the students' world: getting on a bus, donkey looking for its tail, cat playing with a ball, themselves walking on marbles or pillows. |
|
Performance |
Perform simple dances for classmates and/or parents using these skills and ideas. |
III. HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT
Students experience dance performances as cultural and
historical events. They attend performances and/or see video or film recordings
of dance from a variety of cultures and times. They watch, listen and talk
as part of learning that:
1. men and women, adults and children are dancers,
2. dance is a part of everyday life,
3. relationships exist between music and dance,
4. costumes are often used with dance,
5. different dances communicate different feelings and ideas,
6.
they can find similarities and differences in dances from at least two
cultures.
They see and/or participate in dances which relate to
units being studied (e.g., units in English/Language Arts and History-Social
Science).
IV. AESTHETIC VALUING
Students reflect on experiences as audience members and
dancers, talking about:
1. what they see in a dance, relating what they see to movements in their own lives and the world around them,
2. reasons for personal preference ("I like. . ." or "l don't like. . .") of the classroom experience,
3.
questions about dance (Why do I like to dance? What do I like about
dancing? What is dance and what isn't?).
V. CONNECTIONS, RELATIONS, APPLICATIONS
Understanding relationships between the arts and with disciplines outside of the arts.
Students can connect, relate, and apply various
types of arts knowledge and skills within thc art form, across the arts disciplines
(dance, music, theatre and visual arts), and with disciplines outside of the
arts.