Substitute Teacher #3

Happy Saturday, everyone!  Our third Spring Break Substitute Teacher is the awesome Julie, one half of the Dynamic Duo from Teacher 2 Mom!  Thanks so much, Julie for being here today!

Hi Everyone! This is Julie from teacher-2-mom! Kate and I are so excited to be posting on Frogs, Bees, & Under the Seas. We LOVE their amazing blog! I have already been telling all of my friends to check them out! So thank you ladies for giving us this GREAT opportunity!!

Today I'm going to be posting on movement and learning. I am a former first grade teacher turned stay at home mama of one adorable 16 month old. However during my teaching years I also taught dance. Since movement is so important (and necessary!) for a bunch of 6 year olds to do OFTEN throughout the day, many of my lessons had fun moves in them to help them learn.

 Every morning around 9:15 you could walk by my classroom and hear some funky songs playing. If you peeked your head in you'd see a classroom full of first graders all dancing their hearts out to a CHOREOGRAPHED dance that we practiced every day. Then you might also see their goofy teacher (aka me!) up at the front getting as much into the moves as them! Of course you don't have to choreograph your dance to counts of 8, however, I felt it really taught my students coordination and muscle memory. Also, it totally woke them up and got them ready to learn.

 We would learn one new 8 count a week to ensure we were always doing our "personal best" and so late or absent students could join in on the fun too. This was a TREAT for my students and so it made it easy to manage their EXCITEMENT when it was time to dance. At the end of the year at our Evening of Authors night, we would SURPRISE the parents by doing our dance. Let me tell ya, they would die when they saw it! The students would look awesome and they really new the dance and you could tell on each of their faces that they LOVED it too.

When teaching various phonics lessons such as the -oo sound found in soon, we would start at one end of the classroom and sing our -oos as loud (not too loud!) as we could in a sing song voice while dancing in a flowy way across to the other side of the room. This taught the students that your moves can be changed according to the song or the rhythm. It also helped them remember that sound when they were spelling and reading.

Another daily movement we did were squats and jumping jacks as we said aloud our math practice of counting to 100 and then counting by 2's then counting by 5's and then counting by 10's. Once again it got our minds working and we were sure learning in a FUN way.

You can easily include movement in whatever you are teaching. Whether it's the sound of a letter to your 4 year old or the water cycle to your 2nd graders, movement is a fun and motivating way to teach your children and/or students.

I DARE you to try it today. :) You just might find yourself having way too much fun then intended and I know that your children or students will love it.

 Happy Dancing!!