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5 Ideas to Use Nursery Rhymes as a Springboard for Preschool Dance Exploration

November 9, 2022

MOSI + MOO has hours of amazing NURSERY RHYME DANCES for preschoolers, such as Old MacDonald Had a Farm, The Itsy Bitsy Spider, and Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed. 

Creative dance has its own vocabulary — a language that provides new ways for young children to express themselves. This kind of movement literacy is transferable to reading and writing skills.

Dancing to musical verses which use patterns and rhythms is the first memorization piece for movement and language recall for the young child. Moreover, just like when you learn basic narrative principles, dancing to a nursery rhyme expresses a short story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. As such, dance is the perfect introduction to teaching story structure to a young child.

Below are a few new ideas that use nursery rhymes as a springboard for dance exploration. 

Jack Be Nimble 

Line up children behind one another. In the middle of the floor, place an image of a candlestick (could be hand drawn). One at a time, the children jump over the image of the candlestick while they say this rhyme, using their own name: “Jane be nimble, Jane be quick, Jane jump over the candlestick.”

Row, Row, Row Your Boat 

Put children in partners and have them sit cross-legged on the ground facing one another. They then reach out and hold hands across the body, rocking back and forth while they sing the song. On the words “Man overboard,” children scatter to find another partner and repeat the rhyme with a new friend. 

Also, sing and dance along to Row, Row, Row Your Boat with MOSI + MOO! 

Two Little Black Birds 

Choose 2 dancers to come up to the front of the class. Recite the words to this poem, inserting their names: 

“Two little black birds, sitting on a wall, One named ____, one named ____.” Fly away ____, fly away ____.

 Come back ____, come back ____. 

When you say the words “fly away ____,” the two children mimic a flying motion to the back of the room, and when you say “come back___,” they then both come back to where they “sat on the wall” at the beginning of the rhyme. 

Hickory Dickory Dock 

Recite the nursery rhyme below and increase the number each time; as in “the clock struck one, the clock struck two.” On hearing the numbers being called out, children show that

number on their fingers and call out the number with you. 

Hickory dickory dock,

The mouse went up the clock.

The clock struck one,

The mouse went down, 

Hickory dickory dock

A-Tisket, A-Tasket 

Children sit in a circle and everyone sings the nursery rhyme together. One child is chosen and skips around the outside of the circle carrying a small folded letter. When the nursery rhyme ends, the skipper then places the letter behind one of the seated children. It is then their turn to become the skipper. Make sure all children get a turn. 

A-tisket, a-tasket,

A green and yellow basket. 

I wrote a letter to my love,

And on the way I dropped it. 

I dropped it, I dropped it,

And on the way I dropped it. 

A little boy he picked it up, 

And put it in his pocket. 

MOSI + MOO provides countless opportunities for this kind of transferable learning to take place. Click here for 13+ minutes of MOSI + MOO Nursery Rhyme Dances!

#mosiandmoo @mosiandmoo

Looking for Fun Halloween Dance Ideas?

October 6, 2022

Halloween is just around the corner! As a creative dance expert who plays Belle on MOSI + MOO, I have five amazing dance ideas for you to bring the spirit of Halloween into your classroom and home. These fun and engaging activities will enhance every child’s cognitive and physical development.

1. Halloween Freeze Dance
When the music is playing, the children are dancing and when it stops they freeze into the shapes of different Halloween characters. Dance and then freeze like: pumpkins bouncing, ghosts swirling, Frankensteins stomping, bats flying, and spiders creeping! 

2. Tip-Toe Ghosts
In a big space, ask the children to tip-toe behind a friend for 15 seconds. The teacher then shouts out “fly away ghosts” until it is time to tiptoe behind another friend. This is a silly and most fun-filled dance game! 

3. Magic Wand Dance
In partners, children take turns changing themselves, with a real or pretend wand in their hand, into moving animals. Everybody says the chant together facing their partner. 

“Magic Wand 1, 2, 3, change into a ___ in front of me!” 

Once the poem is chanted, the music is then put on and children dance to their partner’s animal suggestion until the music stops. Keep repeating this until you are ready for the next dance game! 

4. Jack-o-lantern Poem
Together, as a class, chant the words: 

“Pumpkin, Pumpkin round it sat
Turn into a Jack-o-lantern just-like-that!” 

On the words, “just-like-that” children can end the chant by making different pumpkins faces! First, you can try a surprised pumpkin face and then a silly pumpkin face, too. Follow it with sad, sleepy, scary, and happy pumpkins. 

5. Dance of the Magic Mirrors
Children will first determine who is going to be “leader” and who will be the “Magic Mirror.” 

The leader begins to dance and the follower acts as a mirror, trying to follow the leader’s dance movements. When the music ends, the children switch positions. The leader now becomes the Magic Mirror, and the Magic Mirror becomes the leader. 

Join MOSI + MOO’s Halloween Dance Party on YouTube! In this hilarious Halloween spookfest, you can dance like skeletons, ghosts, and jack-o-lanterns, and then rock it out! Dance with us and then give my top 5 Halloween dance ideas a try yourself.