Jingle Bells Dance

Confession time: I'm sometimes a Sunday night planner.  Okay, a lot of times I end up planning on a Sunday night.  Now, I have my year, trimester and month plans scoped out of what I want to teach.  What I find myself on Friday nights doing is putting down how I'm going to teach it and the song literature and activities that go with that.

My first are practicing ta & ti-ti and of course "Jingle Bells" a good song for isolating ti-ti ta ti-ti ta on the "jingle bells, jingle bells" part.  Now, pardon my rush but the only version of Jingle Bells on my computer is in augmentation of how I sing it and have my kids read it:

We're going to be doing some reading work of ta ti-ti in the high concentration portion of the lesson and deriving the ti-ti ta ti-ti ta on "jingle bells, jingle bells" is going to be my transition into the "change of pace" portion of the lesson, which will be a dance that goes to Jingle Bells.  

There are two ways that I do this dance.  The easier version uses a parachute and the more advanced version has concentric circles with partners.

Here's the parachute dance directions:

Formation: circle, everyone holding on to the parachute.

Action:

Verse (32 beats total)

Beats 1-4: heel-toe-heel-toe with the right foot (dashing through the snow)

Beats 5-8: four slide steps to the right- like a side-ways gallop (in a one horse open sleigh)

Beats 9-12: heel-toe-heel-toe with the left foot (o'er the fields we go)

Beats 13-16: four slide steps to the left. (laughing all the way)

Beats 17-32: repeat the first 16 beats

Chorus (32 beats total)

Beats 1-2: with parachute in hands, three pats on feet to the rhythm (jin-gle bells)

Beats 3-4: three pats on knees, to the rhythm (jin-gle bells)

Beats 5-8: four pats at waist, to the beat

Beats 9-16: lift the parachute over the head.  I call a color and those students with that color let go of the parachute, turn around in place and re-grab parachute.  Now, if your students are really careful those students on the colors called can run under the parachute to another spot of that same color.  This is the FUN way to play! ;)

Beats 17-32: repeat the first 16 beats.

When I do this with older kiddos we do it in a concentric circles.  

Formation: concentric circles, facing partners (one in the outside circle, one in the inside circle)

Action:

Verse (32 beats total)

Beats 1-4: heel-toe-heel-toe with the foot that leads in the counter-clockwise direction.  This is the right foot for the outside circle and the left foot for the inside circle (dashing through the snow)

Beats 5-8: four slide steps counterclockwise- like a side-ways gallop (in a one horse open sleigh)

Beats 9-12: heel-toe-heel-toe with foot that leads in the clockwise direction (o'er the fields we go)

Beats 13-16: four slide steps clockwise. (laughing all the way)

Beats 17-32: repeat the first 16 beats

Chorus (32 beats total)

Beats 1-2: with right hands, partners pat each other's hands three times to the rhythm (jin-gle bells)

Beats 3-4: with left hands, partners pat each other's hands three times, to the rhythm (jin-gle bells)

Beats 5-6: with both hands, pat three times as in the first two steps.  **This will NOT match the rhythm

Beats 7-8: clap own hands three times.  **Again, this will NOT match the rhythm

Beats 9-16: join hands with partner and do a full circle turn

Beats 17-32: repeat the first 16 beats, with the exception that in the last step, after the full circle turn everyone takes an extra step to the left and then has a new partner.  This has a really nice flow and even the older kids enjoy it!

Have a great day!