Sharing Creative Movement With Your Child

Sharing Creative Movement With Your Child

Sharing Creative Movement with

Your Child

by Edwina Peterson Cross

Reprinted with permission of the author from

Welcome Home, Volume 13, No. 12, December, 1996, a publication of the national nonprofit

organization, Mothers At Home.

From the Editor: It's wonderful to be told,

as parents of blind children, that our children are more like sighted children than not.

And it's reassuring to hear that blind kids, given the opportunity and training, can

participate in ordinary activities with little or no assistance and maybe a few

adaptations here and there. But it's quite another thing to behave as if we really believe

it. Especially when it comes to the most ordinary physical activities.

Parents are often stymied by the simplest

things—teaching a child to tie shoes, bounce a ball, skip rope, climb a tree, use a

knife to cut meat or spread peanut butter, walk quickly, climb steps gracefully, and so

the list goes. It isn't hard for blind children to do these things—if given the

opportunity to practice the basic body movements upon which these skills are based. And

that practice should begin as soon as the child can move. It isn't work for the

child—it's play, and it's fun. But these playful movements are building a foundation

for very important physical and social skills which the child will need later in life.

Several articles in this issue, including this

one, deal with various aspects of encouraging normal body movement. You will notice that

the following article was written for the general public—not for blind children at

all. But the information is basic to all children, and many of the suggested activities

can be done with few if any adaptations for blind children. Here it is:

My mother says I began dancing before I was born.

It certainly seems I have always known the joy of movement—movement that combines the

physical body with the mind and spirit. It has often been my privilege to share that joy

with children by teaching them creative dance.

Before birth, a child is constantly exposed to

rhythm—the internal pattern created by its mother's heartbeat and its own. Very early

in life, a baby will indicate a love of sound and movement in many ways. A two-year-old

stops to listen to the stereo, and you can almost see her thinking, "The music is all

very well, but it's not quite enough!" Her arms lift, something moves inside her, and

she begins to dance.

My creative dance classes begin with three- and

four-year-old children. At this age, children move instinctively, as they're still free of

the inhibitions that can stifle movement in adults and older children. Dancing enhances

their creativity and reinforces the idea that moving in their own way is right and good.

Older children can experience the joy of movement and can go on to more and more advanced

explorations, but sometimes they must shed inhibitions and shyness before they are able to

let themselves move freely.

While a formal class in creative movement or

creative dance can be a place for a child to experiment with different ways of moving,

there are many activities a parent can do to nurture a child's instincts for creative

movement.

Parents can help to develop that creative spirit

by reinforcing a free, uninhibited style and movements that are unique and different. A

child needs to understand that not all movement is competitive or goal-oriented. Like art,

movement can be an expression of a child's inner self. Mom or Dad can even encourage while

correcting in a time and place where movement isn't appropriate. "I see your

beautiful butterfly wings. Right now you need to fold them up and be as quiet as a

caterpillar. When we get home you can fly them all over the backyard, and I'll

watch!"

Understanding the ten basic elements, or building

blocks, of dance is helpful to parents, since all movement is based on these elements. The

child uses them much as he uses different media for art (crayons, paint, clay). They are

tools with which the body and mind work.

The building blocks are simple.

1. Size: Big movements, small movements, and

everything in between.

2. Directions: Moving forward, backward,

sideways, up and down.

3. Level: Movements close to the ground (low

level), stretching, reaching, jumping (high level movements), and everything in between.

4. Shape: Body design in space.

5. Steps: Walk, run, hop, jump, leap, gallop,

slide.

6. Body moves: Stretch, bend, twist, swing, sway,

shake.

7. Body parts: head, shoulders, arms, hands,

hips, back, feet, toes, etc.

8. Force: Sharp or smooth, tight or loose, strong

or light.

9. Tempo: Fast or slow.

10. Pathway: The path in which the movement takes

the dancer.

The atmosphere of movement should be one of

exploration and experimentation—discovery by doing. As children learn the elements

they begin to translate each one into movement, using the elements separately and in

combination to produce interesting and creative movement. There is no right or wrong.

Readily available objects help children to

"see" movement. A rubber band for "stretch," pipe cleaners for

"bend," jar lids for "twist," a weight on a string for

"swing," a top for "spin," a broom against the wall for

"lean," trees blown by a high wind for "sway." There is no better way

to understand "shake" than to watch a wet dog! After they have watched and

digested, children can translate each new word into movements of their own.

As they begin to incorporate the elements, they

can try combining them in different ways. A suggestion could be, "Can you make a very

tiny shape and still swing something?" or "See if you can move forward at a low

level." Questions work well, too—"What can your arms do while your feet are

sliding?"—as do reinforcing statements like, "You're moving very, very

slowly as you turn!" Verbal directions and reinforcements are better than an adult's

physical demonstrations, because children learn early to imitate, and at this stage,

imitation is the antithesis of creative movement. Children need to experiment and discover

the wonderful things their own bodies can do. By developing these concepts, the children's

vocabulary and verbal abilities develop along with their movement skills.

There are other ways to make movement ideas more

concrete for children. Some items they can observe and translate into their own movements

are: pinwheels, crepe paper streamers, balloons, lightweight brightly colored scarves,

loops of tricot, yarn balls, Chinese jump ropes, bells strung on elastic to go on wrists

and ankles, garbage bags filled with air and tied shut. A hot-air popper set in the center

of a large sheet and allowed to pop the corn without the lid provides a memorable

experience in movement (when watched from a safe distance!) Watching food color slowly

dissolve in water, studying the cat, blowing bubbles—any movement that the child can

analyze and transfer into her own movement vocabulary is valuable.

Language, music, literature, art, and poetry can

be used as springboards to movement. A Rainbow of My Own by Don Freeman, Where the Wild

Things Are by Maurice Sendak, The Bear Dance by Chris Riddel, Jamberry by Bruce Degan,

Grandfather Twilight by Barbara Berger, and The Rainbow Giblins by Ulde Rico are picture

books that can stimulate thought and feeling and help get movement ideas flowing. Children

love to move to the poetry of Shel Silverstein, Christina Rossetti, and Myra Cohn

Livingston, as well as Robert Louis Stevenson and William Shakespeare. Sing a Song of

Popcorn, published by Scholastic, Inc. is a good collection of poems, many of which

translate easily into movement.

Music is an invaluable companion of movement, and

any kind of music works. Children respond well to a strong beat, but also love to move to

all varieties of classical music, rock, and jazz. The flavor and the feeling of the music

can be varied to provide different movement experiences. Children love to move to the beat

of a drum or just the clapping of hands. Clapping out the syllables of their names or the

name of foods: ap-ple, lem-on, ba-na-na, lime, is a good pre-reading exercise, too.

The more children move, the more they develop

strength, flexibility, and awareness and control of their bodies. Movement as creative

expression can be a pathway for building self-awareness, self-image, and

self-direction—and it's fun!