GYGLF Activity Outline

Creative Dance
Age group: K-3rd grade
Farm goals:
N: Children learn about/feel more connected to nature.
H: Children learn about/engage in healthy behavior (exercise, nutrition).
M: Children exercise gross and fine motor skills.
C: Children demonstrate cooperative behavior.
Activity Description:
Nutshell:
Students use movement to explore, understand, and become familiar
with the parts of a plant.
Questions and Teachable Moments:
What kinds of dance do you know (break dancing, ballet, salsa)?
What do you think creative dance is (dance we make up)?
Explain that we often use words or pictures to communicate
things to one anothertoday we will be using movement.
Introduce the topic (e.g. plant parts).
Expand on students ideasWhat would that movement look like
if we did it with our feet instead of our arms? How could we do
that movement down low? What if we repeated that movement?
Be a yes man. Encourage every idea students have even if it
doesnt make sense to you. Its more important to encourage a
sense of ownership of the topic than to create a logical dance.
If theres extra time students can share what they liked about
other groups dances (encourage them to be specific).
Tips and Tricks:
Its good to do a warm up activity (e.g. move like a feather, now
make a shape like a crumpled up piece of paper, make a shape
as high as possible, make a shape low to the ground, etc.) to get
students used to moving their bodies.
Divide students into small groups with one leader in each group.
Each group receives a picture.
First, have students describe the picture with words (e.g. spiky,
green, twisty, soft, bendy, etc.) and keep a list.
Have students sketch out the words that theyve chosen.
Have students come up with movements related to their images
and words.

Assemble several movements together in a sequence and

practice it with the students.
Each small group presents their dance to the larger group.
Reiterate that weve described the different plant parts, weve
described them with movement, and thank everyone for their
input.
This same format can be used for pretty much any concept/item
on the farm. Other examples include the water cycle, a specific
crop/plant, the hive, what plants need to grow, intercropping, the
composition of soil, etc.

Supplies:
Images that represent the different parts of a plant (or physical
examples from the farm).
Paper or chalkboards to sketch ideas.
Optional: speakers/an Ipod for music.
Camera/phone to record dances.
Set-up:
Create a playlist of music.
Choose an open space on the farm to use.
Get chalkboard/paper and speakers ready.
Adapted from workshops created by Celeste Miller and Ana Novak.