Diane Louise Jordan has the first of two dance sessions about Aesop's famous fable of a speedy hare and a toiling tortoise.
1. Ready, steady, go!
At a fantasy forest sports day the children prepare with exercises and groups of animals try out an obstacle course with fun race actions. Hare challenges Tortoise to see who is the faster. In pairs, the children get ready for a race at the starting line then鈥hey鈥檙e off, each at their different speeds, Hare sprinting madly, Tortoise plodding steadily. All dance individually as Hare (jumpily and jazzily), then as Tortoise (slowly and 'bluesily').
Resources
Download the audio for this dance session as an mp3 file.
Guidance on using the dance sessions in this unit with your group (pdf)
Lesson summary
Warm-up: stretches, jogging and star-jumps. General sporty warm-up actions (as if for own schools sports-day): low and high stretches, jogging through the forest and star jumps.
Laying out the obstacle course. Setting out and moving over, under, around and through imaginary obstacles as a follow-my- leader. Then return back the other way (following whoever was at the end) with fun-race actions.
The challenge: Hare v Tortoise. In pairs, on the spot, contrast the general movement styles of Hare (fast and frantic boogie) with Tortoise (slow and steady blues).
Get ready鈥teady鈥 The pairs set off, each at their own pace, as the race begins鈥
Go hare go! All perform as Hare, moving like the wind, sprinting, dashing, darting and developing actions into dance patterns and angular shapes, with extra twirls and head nods.
Go slow, tortoise (cooling down鈥) Moving with hands-on-knees, step by step, plodding along with rounded back, slowly and steadily.
Related units of KS1 Dance: Time to Move
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A three-part unit based on the traditional story, popularised by the poem by Robert Browning.
Alice in Wonderland. collection
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