The Freeze Dance game is one of those activities that I think is tough for adults to really get. Many of my young students go nuts for it, but it's one activity that is hard for my adult mind to fathom could be that fun. Play some fun music, kids dance around (and in my classes sing!) and freeze when the music stops. That's pretty much it.
When I introduce a new song in class, I often like to do it with an activity in which they are listening to the song but with no implied expectation that they need to learn the song. By the time we really sing the song together, they've learned most of it already just through repeated listenings during other activities. There is no real teaching involved you could say, just learning.
The Freeze Dance is a nice activity for this. Kids are listening intently to the music throughout even though they are focused on something else. And we just naturally start singing. It really does just kind of soak in. And I love seeing the way kids express themselves in their dancing.
Toddlers Today has a nice idea for playing freeze dance with toddlers, but it works great with older kids as well. Attach some bells to the children's wrists and/or ankles. For the younger kids, it really helps them play with the rhythm as they are dancing, and for both older and younger kids, it helps identify the kids who are moving when the music stops.
Toddlers Today has some other great ideas for exploring rhythm with young ones in the same article.
As an aside, I think one of the great things about having started this blog is that I may finally have a handle on spelling the word rhythm ;-)
Hi there,
I was searching for "feeze dance" and here came to your blog.
I like your blog! Thank you for your reference. I am from Taiwan and I'm an English teacher in elementary school. Nice to meet you and I look forward for more of your sharing!
Best,
Moji
Posted by: moji | February 27, 2007 at 06:15 AM