Responding to Dance

One of our Kindergarten outcomes is to respond to arts expressions verbally and non-verbally.  I am not much of an artsy person, so I'm always looking for new ideas to help the Kindergarten students love art.  I was looking for an activity for the day after Halloween.  I knew my kids would still be wound up and would need something exciting to get their attention.  I decided to look on youtube to see if I could find some kind of Halloween dance video that they could respond to.  I came across last year's dancing with the starts Halloween dance.  It was a pretty neat video and I thought the kids would be interested.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-Ws3rBVaoo

After watching the video, the kids discussed the video . . .

What did you see?
What did you like?
What didn't you like?
How did the dance make you feel?
How do you think the dancers wanted you to feel?


I then gave them a sheet of paper to respond to the video through pictures or words. Here's a sample of their work.

The kids had a great time!  All of their pictures were very creative, with people drawn upside down to show how they were standing on their heads, some had movement lines, etc.  My daughter (who is in my class) told me that was the best part of her day!