Five Minute Dance Party is always a favorite reward or brain break. The kids earn dance parties with class points, or from having an awesome day. They love dancing, it’s free, it gets them moving, gets the wiggles out, helps them focus and it’s fast and easy to do if you have little dance videos queued up and ready to go. Read here, here and here to see why dance, movement and music are important to child development.
Our Dance Party Rules:
- Feet stay on the floor (For some reason kids think donkey kicks are good dance moves.)
- No running
- Stay in your Dance Space (No 1st grade mosh pit.)
- Dance alone, no dancing together. (This prevents a lot of falling and knocking each other over.)
- Non-dancers must sit in a chair.
Some of our favorite dance music
Most of the time we dance to songs from CDs or the iPod, but some of the kids didn’t know how to dance and that made them very shy. We started watching Dance-Along videos on YouTube and it really helped the shy ones pick up some easy dances and boosted their confidence.
Yo Gabba Gabba–Dancey Dance
These are each about 2 minutes so we often watched 2 or 3 of them, or the same one several times.
Just Dance Kids
(pulled from the Wii game)
There are many more Just Dance Videos on Mrs. Mansouri’s YouTube channel.
Sesame Street
*Some of these have dancers holding hands and touching elbows, etc. So if you have a “no touching” rule just warn the kids ahead of time, or assign partners.
There are tons more on Sesame Street’s YouTube page or SesameStreet.org — just type “dance” in the search box.
High School Musical Dance Along
(My kids NEVER got these harder dance moves down, but none of them cared. And it was so cute to see them try.)
For calmer, more focused and directed dances, try these:
Hap Palmer:
Other great Hap Palmer songs (on CD) include Paper Clocks, Tap Your Sticks, Shake Something, Turn Around and Let’s All Clap Our Hands. I love these CDs and his soothing, calm voice.
Parade of Colors–No movement on this video. Each kid holds a colored card and they all have to listen to the song and follow directions.
Dr. Jean Felman
My Mother is a Baker–I’m not sure why these kids are sitting. It’s much more hilarious when they’re moving their hips.
Tooty-Ta
Here’s a list of all the good things performing Tooty Ta does for your kids.
Other fun Dr. Jean Songs:
Mother Gooney Bird
Alphardy
Mr. Knickerbocker
Kiss Your Brain
Patalina Matalina
She has more YouTube and TeacherTube videos on her site here.
Love this! Thanks for putting it all in one place for us busy teachers!!
Great blog thanks for posting this.