"Friends."

CHB Dance Centre Visits

Fling

Highland Dancers Visit

Highlights of the visit. Watch for our children having a go and lesson times at the end.

Mainly Music Easter 2011

Our Dancers

We Can Stomp

The Farm At The End of the Road

Today we travelled by bus to Napier Municipal Theatre where we were entertained by an array of puppets and actors. We then went on to have lunch at the park on the Marine Parade before returning home.

Some more highland form the end of last term

Please excuse the crying in the background, a sad sibling who was visiting with mum.

I found the different interpretations fascinating.

Our New Ballet Bar

CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO ENLARGE

More Highland

Highland dancing continues to be requested, and there's lots of "I'm going to be at dancing tomorrow," with mums telling us our dancers count the sleeps between lessons.

Eden, Katy, Billie, Abigail, Harriet, Charlotte and more.

We watched some pipe bands on youtube the other day to learn about how the music is made. We also had a go a marching, did you know Sharon used to be a marching girl, and so was her mum.

We must watch the dancers on Greenwood Community Kindergarten's Blog with our dancers, what will they think?

Julie Appleton-Seymours Dancers visited.

Edit please excuse my error on the video (trying to do to many jobs at once when I made it). In the title I meant dances, not dancers, though we did see lots of them too.

Here's some video highlights of over an hour and a half of dancing.

Julie Appleton-Seymour brought in around 20 of her dancers including a number of our past and current pupils. Lots of people came to watch the show including Grandparents, some even over from England.

Some of our children stayed glued to their seats (or up and dancing), watching and joining the dancers for the whole show, while others took the oppertunity to go outside to play, often coming back in to see more.

All of them got some thing special from the show.

One little girl, on a Kindergarten visit with mum, joined in with full energy, getting commended by Julie for her efforts.

At one point Julie noticed Emily and Gina clapping in time and after the dance got them to stand up and she remaked how wonderful it was that they were clapping in time. After that much more clapping followed which Julie further supported and encouraged.

She showed us some simple steps, and talked to us about how they can help children develop.

Afterwards I was amazed at who was dancing, many who hadn't been willing to get up with all the people there where dancing away "look at me!"

Recital 2009

CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Highland dancers visit

With our interest in dance and Charlotte's interest in highland dance in particular we took advantage of school holidays arriving to invite two highland dancers to kindergarten.



At first I thought our dancers wouldn't be able to make it, one had had a temperature the night before and the other a nasty fall off a swing frame, I'd told them we'd be okay, but they really wanted to be here and to my pleasant surprise they both trooped in and even did a performance at Lakeview Kindergarten for their brother first.



Annabelle started us off with three dances.

Then Bridget took over and danced us through the rest of their repertoire non stop. Bridget was worn out after all that so Annabelle came back out to instruct the children in highland dance. We were all impressed by her kind, caring, supportive and positive manner, she'll make a lovely dance teacher.

Charlotte's friend Piper has been giving Charlotte tips.

We learnt boys can do highland dance too.

Annabelle helped us learn to squash the bug and to balance.

Dance and music help build mathematical patterns in the brain.

After some individual coaching Annabelle taught the children how to space themselves out with their arms and we all tried it with the music.

We got better and better and even Jo and I had a go.

Dancers

With many of our children in Julie's dance recital , they've been practising flat tack. Last week they kept coming up and asking for dance music, I offer them a range of options as always from Billy Idol and Celtic bagpipes to Swan lake. Today's choice was Nutcracker (hope I got that right, might be some swan lake in there to.) Together we explored the literacy of dance. I'm a firm believer that everyone should dance, boys and girls, grown ups and kids, even if I must admit I laugh when I see myself up there, it's fun.

As the week went by our group continued to grow, with boys too, we also watched some great ballet dancers, male and female, on line on youtube. (Including our favourite Chinese acrobatic group dancing swan lake.)

We dance all the time at Hunter Park, but we certainly danced a lot last week. More video to come featuring some highland dance and more. I've also invited some highland dancers this week to come in and show us some moves on Thursday.

This video from the 17th features Grace, Gina, Charlotte, Elise, Eden, a little of Billie, Meadow and Kaitlyn Jo and a strange huge dancing butterfly or possibly caterpillar, we call crash for obvious reasons.

Our Fairy

David's voice:

When the girls asked for princess music I decided rather than put it straight on, I would challenge and extend their ideas around it a bit first.

The first piece I played them was and Irish reel. "That's not princess music they told me."

Not put off and despite a gouty foot, I managed to demonstrate a fair reel, but they still weren't happy so I pulled up the next piece I'd selected as potential princess music. Billy Idol's 'white wedding.'

Another demonstration, but sure enough "That's not princess music, that's rock music."

So I moved on to some Strauss 'Leichtes Blut- Light as a feather' a toss dance. This they had to think about, it was obviously nearly princess music, but not quite. "That's not princess music either."

Annalise was finally forced by my obstinate ignorance to rethink her question and draw on her experiences to rephrase her request. "Barbie music is princess music."

"Oh I said."

I tried them on Khatschaturian's 'sabre dance.' "Is this Barbie music."

I could see them think again.

"No swan lake."

Oh I said you want some Tschaikowsky, he wrote swan lake."

"No swan lake is from Barbie."

"Well I'll try this Tschaikowsky 'Swan lake' and we'll see if it's the same."

Oh my it was!

"Yes that's it."

"Oh so Tschaikowsky must have written the music for Barbie's swan lake."

I then challenged them further, by dancing with them.

"You can't dance you're a boy, boys can't be princesses."

"Yes I can I'm a beautiful boy princess see I've got my princess dress on." It didn't fit on my head or tummy so I stuck one on each leg.

We had a lot of fun leaping and dancing together in the waltz parts I picked them up and twirled them around, till they quite wore me out with "me next". We went on to 'Sleeping beauty' and 'The nutcracker', and then I asked Elise if she wanted me to play "For Elise."

She did and Annalise recognised it from 'Young Einsteins' "That's from the t.v. with the rocket."

Later at mat I reinforced our discovery that the Barbie music was by Tschaikowsky, several times and then put some on to dance too. We all sat in a circle and who ever wanted to dance could. Then I let those who'd been dancing go off to wash their hands or stay dancing if they wanted. With this license to dance soon nearly everybody was up, by the time of last snippet of music, only two children still felt too shy to dance. And once more the boys demonstrated they were the some of the best dancers, Caleb W and Connor especially (They'd also demonstrated this the other day doing their take on what highland dancing would look like a mix a crumping and breakdancing apparently. :) ) I was glad of this as earlier I'd noticed at least three boys wanting to dance but not confident enough to give it a go with all the girls dominating the dance floor, now they got their chance.

Amazing what can happen when you decide to be ignorant ;).

A Great Time with Music

We decided to bring the music trolley outside last week under the veranda. We also brought the stereo and a wide variety of CD's. Lots and lots of the chilren came along during the week to have a go at the wonderful music and dancing activies that were happening. Some of the time a teacher was working alongside the children, encouraging them to try out different instruments and ways of moving their bodies. Other times the children worked independently, setting their own goals and exploring ways of working.

It is great to see so many children exploring different ways of moving their body, listening to different types of music, such as drums, classical and music from the radio and working alongside others.

Lots of boys decided to join in with us as well - great to see!

We will have the music out again this week and se what other types of music we can find.