Ms. Sadie and the Organized Chaos
or: a Traveling Obstacle Course
by Sadie Yarrington, Invert/ED teacher
Busy, busy bees!
Last week my first graders and I explored what I like to call 'organized chaos'.
Bodies, bubbles and brains moved freely amongst, around, over and even under one another.
With their spring break a few days away, the excitement in the room was particularly volcanic. They just wanted, and needed, to move!
Building on the axial movements we discovered last week, we focused this energy on traveling our bodies through space. Moving at whatever speed they wanted and in whatever direction they desired, we all safely explored hopping, tiptoe-ing, slithering, lunging, marching, jumping, the grape vine/karaoke, galloping, skipping, crawling and leaping throughout the space. As they navigated around one another the room came to life. Somewhat frightened and overtly fascinated, I felt as though I was among 30 buzzing bees inside a single glass jar. Organized chaos!!
Because we had practiced awareness in our space bubbles last week, we could navigate without bumping into one another.
Once we had a sense of all the ways we could travel, it was time to move through the space individually. With several colorful cones, I marked a diagonal line across the room and we plotted our dance obstacle course.
Red cone to Blue cone = army crawl
Blue cone to Green cone = creepy tip-toe
Green cone to Orange cone = free dance (dance however you want)
Orange cone to Yellow cone = leap, leap, leap!!
When traveling and dancing through space it's always good to remind yourself to..
Trust your body and the bodies around you.
React to your surroundings.
Activate your imagination.
Vivacious energy!
Eyes open and exploring.
Locomote and let your body go, go, go!
Each student was fearless, each class was focused and supportive and Ms. Sadie couldn't be more proud of all her bouncing bubbles and buzzing bees.
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Invert/ED is Invertigo's education program. We are currently working on a 10-week residency with 4 first-grade classes through the wonderful Music Center Education Program. More information on Invert/ED can be found here.