Wii Dance
So it's winter and cold and John and I aren't inclined to be out doing much walking or hiking so for exercise we've pulled out the Wii system again and started dancing to the "Just Dance" programs again. We bought them last winter just for that purpose, to have something to exercise with in the cold weather. It's still a lot of fun and we're building up slowly doing about 20-25 minutes a night right now aiming to stretch that time as we get our dance legs again.
Back before Christmas I had the other Gr. 4 teacher approach me asking if I would like to combine our two classes together in the New Year to work on our Gr. 4 dance unit, which is part of the gym program. She had decided to bring her Wii system to school, set it up in the gym with the big screen TV and have the students learn some of the routines from the "Let's Dance for Kids" program. Her daughter has done the dances so the teacher was quite familiar with them. It seemed like an inspired idea to me, as neither of us have training in teaching dance, so we set up the big screen TV in the gym for the first time today and gave it a try.
The kids loved it. First of all it surprised me that when I asked my class how many of them had danced to the "Let's Dance" program either at home or at someone else's house about 90% of them put up their hands. Those video game dance programs are popular. So when we started the dances in the gym all the kids got enthusiastically into it jumping and moving, swaying their arms. Even the kids I thought might be "too cool" for such things were having the time of their lives. So fun. We figure we'll do the Wii dances for 4-5 weeks twice a week. We'll just let them practice for the first two weeks and then in the last few weeks we'll observe and mark them for effort, stamina, coordination, ability to learn routines.
I figure this unit, plus the Medieval dance I will teach them later in the year for their Medieval Festival should work well.
Back before Christmas I had the other Gr. 4 teacher approach me asking if I would like to combine our two classes together in the New Year to work on our Gr. 4 dance unit, which is part of the gym program. She had decided to bring her Wii system to school, set it up in the gym with the big screen TV and have the students learn some of the routines from the "Let's Dance for Kids" program. Her daughter has done the dances so the teacher was quite familiar with them. It seemed like an inspired idea to me, as neither of us have training in teaching dance, so we set up the big screen TV in the gym for the first time today and gave it a try.
The kids loved it. First of all it surprised me that when I asked my class how many of them had danced to the "Let's Dance" program either at home or at someone else's house about 90% of them put up their hands. Those video game dance programs are popular. So when we started the dances in the gym all the kids got enthusiastically into it jumping and moving, swaying their arms. Even the kids I thought might be "too cool" for such things were having the time of their lives. So fun. We figure we'll do the Wii dances for 4-5 weeks twice a week. We'll just let them practice for the first two weeks and then in the last few weeks we'll observe and mark them for effort, stamina, coordination, ability to learn routines.
I figure this unit, plus the Medieval dance I will teach them later in the year for their Medieval Festival should work well.