Write & Dance Rationale
Our Write and Dance sessions are a kinaesthetic approach to stimulate early mark making and writing. The dance part encourages children to use and develop the gross motor muscles that are required for increased control over mark making tools. Then as the mark making session matches the same movements made in the air but this time on paper, children learn to associate music to specific movements and shapes on the paper. This understanding leads to children learning to draw simple images independently.
Similarly, for more able students the session can be tailored to meet their needs, so instead of focussing on straight lines, circles, zig zags and bumpy lines, the children focus on practicing writing accurate letter shapes, whilst retaining the fun aspect of moving around to music.
Aims and objectives of Write and Dance
- To begin to show control in their use of tools and equipment.
- To look at the marks they are making and explore making a wider variety of marks.
- To experiment with tools and resources, mark making in many different resources with a variety of tools.
- To understand they can create simple pictures by putting different marks together.
- To create movements on a large scale.
- To understand that some marks have a meaning.
- To talk about the marks the children have made, describe and discuss them.
- To use anti-clockwise movements.
- To begin to form recognisable letters and shapes.
- To develop gross motor muscles and thereby increase control over writing tools.
The kinds of movements children learn during the session (these can be done to any music that suits the movement, feel free to experiment) are;
- Up and down (l, t, f, k, i, j);
- Side to side (t, f);
- Circles (p, d, b, e, o, a, c, g, q);
- Arches and scoops (like a rainbow) (n, m, h, u, y, r);
- Diagonals crossing the body (v, w, x, z);