The Story in Motion-Kindergarten
This sequence of story and exercises is done with the movement and gesture appropriate to the therapeutic content.
Kindergarten to First Grade (for a group of 2-5 children)
A Day In The Country
One day Klara and Karl awoke from the sun as it peered into their window and danced about as if to say:
‘Awake awake the stars have set
The sun is out today, awake.’
Down in the kitchen was Betty Botta mixing the morning bread. As the children stepped down the stairs, this is what they said:
‘Betty Botta bought some butter
But she said, this butter’s bitter
If I put it in my batter
It will make my batter bitter
So she went and bought some butter
Better than the other butter
And it made her bitter batter better.’
– Anon
So Betty had finished her batter and put it in the oven to bake. Then breakfast was over. As Klara hurried to replace the bread in the box she said:
‘Little Miss Munching Mouse
Munches mince meat in my house
Lamp or light no longer lit
Biting munching, bit by bit
Bits of beans of bread of buns
Comes the cat to catch the crumbs.’
With that the children bounded out to see what they could see.
‘The earth is sure beneath my feet
And see, upright I stand
The heavens arch above my head
And friends I have to take my hands.’
– Anon
The animal friends that they did see were on the earth in a pond and up in trees:
‘Oh,’ said Karl:
‘What else do you see?’ said Klara
‘The galloping horses are bigger than bunnies.’
‘Clip, Clop, Clip, Clop
Horse in saddle
Flip, flap, flip, flap
Flip the whip, Flap the strap
Whap!’
– Anon
‘Galloping, galloping over the hill
O, what a frolic for Klara and Karl
– Anon
‘Come back, come back,’ Round up at the corral:
‘Clippity clop Clippity clop
Colts are galloping home non-stop.’
– Anon
If you’re back clap up!
‘Clap up, clap down
Clap behind, clap before
Clap up, clap down,
As we have often done before.’
– From ‘Journey Through Time in Verse and Rhyme – Poems collected by Heather Thomas’
LUNCHTIME:
Let’s help Betty Botta chop the beets.
Chop, chop, choppety chop,
Chop up the bottom and chop up the top.
What there is left we shall pop in the pot.
Chop chop, choppety chop. Say grace…
– Anon
Now we’ve had our lunch,
With soup to eat and greens to munch
So let’s go on a visit to our wee small hut:
(The children playing or speaking, go inside and the others knock on the door).
To visit:
1. Miss Prune
2. Child knocking
3. 1-6 little mimers or actors or speakers
4. the watchers
(Knock, knock, knock)
‘Someone came a knocking
At my wee small door
Someone came a knocking
I’m sure, I’m sure, I’m sure.
I listened I opened
I looked to left and right
But no one was a stirring
In the still day light.’
Except for: ‘Johnny’ (the kids say their names)
‘May the flea and fly come out to play?’
The children playing a flea and a fly come out the door. Either one speaks or the teacher speaks and they repeat or several speak and the others mime (circle game):
1. ‘A flea and a fly in a flue
Were together, so what could they do
Said the flea ‘let us fly’
Said the fly ‘let us flee’
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.’
– From ‘Journey Through Time in Verse and Rhyme – Poems collected by Heather Thomas’
They say good-bye and go back in
Another knock is followed by the same.
May the Caterpillars come out to Play?
2. ‘Caterpillar green and furry
Creeps along from leaf to leaf
Caterpillar, though your time be brief
You can tell a wondrous story
Short your life, for you must die
To live again a butterfly.’
– From ‘Journey Through Time in Verse and Rhyme – Poems collected by Heather Thomas’
The same procedure – another one:
3. ‘Caterpillar creeping
Up a stalk
Feet are blindly feeling
Where they’ll walk
Soon you’ll be a butterfly
And spread your wings and off you’ll fly.’
Two butterflies come out of roses:
4. ‘Butterflies are fluttering among the flowers
Flit on many coloured wings through sunlit hours
Roses glowing on either hand
We bloom and we blossom here we stand.’
– From ‘Journey Through Time in Verse and Rhyme – Poems collected by Heather Thomas’
‘Goodbye butterflies’ (flowers stay out)
‘It’s the buzzing bees’
5. ‘It makes me feel a little dizzy
To watch the bees so small and buzzy
They gather pollen at all hours
To make the honey from the flowers’
– From ‘Journey Through Time in Verse and Rhyme – Poems collected by Heather Thomas’
‘The French Dragonfly’ (circle game)
6. Libellule libellule, coleur bleuté
Tu t’en va, tu t’en va
Dans les près.
Libellule libellule conleur mouille
Tut’en va – dan les près
– French Lullaby
7. ‘It’s wiggly worm come up to top
To squirm and wriggle he just won’t stop
He’ll stretch and stretch and crawl and crawl
See first he’s big and then he’s small –
It’s wriggly worm come out to call.’
– From ‘Journey Through Time in Verse and Rhyme – Poems collected by Heather Thomas’
8. ‘Underneath the water weeds
Small and black I wriggle
And life is most surprising
Wriggle waggle tadpole
There’s now and then a most
Exciting change in me
I wonder wriggle waggle
What I shall turn out to be.’
A Frog!
– From ‘Journey Through Time in Verse and Rhyme – Poems collected by Heather Thomas’
‘What about the kittens’
9. ‘Come to your mother you naughty little kittens
Come to your mother the mother cat cried
For the kittens were fighting and biting each other
But mother cat soon had them safely inside.’
– From ‘Journey Through Time in Verse and Rhyme – Poems collected by Heather Thomas’
10. ‘Now the kittens are sleeping warm and still
Look at them sleeping on my pillow.
When they awake they’ll be racing
And teasing and chasing
And lapping their milk ‘til
They’ve both had their fill-o.’
– From ‘Journey Through Time in Verse and Rhyme – Poems collected by Heather Thomas’
11. ‘Slowly, slowly, like a snail
I move towards the corner
Creeping, creeping on my way
At last I reach the corner.’
– From ‘Journey Through Time in Verse and Rhyme – Poems collected by Heather Thomas’
12. ‘Let us make a little visit to the curly house of snail
Round we go until we find him hidden in his coat of mail
Then we turn and go back homeward still a winding all
the way
‘Til we come out from his tunnel to the sunny light of day’
– From ‘Journey Through Time in Verse and Rhyme – Poems collected by Heather Thomas’
Fiddle-de-dee! May the grasshoppers come out to play (High June, by C. A. Morin)
13. Fiddle de dee!
Grasshoppers three
Rollicking over the meadow;
Scarcely the grass,
Bends as they pass,
So fairy-light is their tread, O!
Said grasshopper one,
‘The summer’s begun
This sunshine is driving me crazy!’
Said grasshopper two,
‘I feel just like you’
And leapt on the top of a daisy.
‘Please wait for me!’
Cried grasshopper three,
‘My legs are ready for hopping!’
So grasshoppers three,
Fiddle de dee
Raced all the day without stopping.
– From ‘Journey Through Time in Verse and Rhyme – Poems collected by Heather Thomas’
May the crocodile and the fishes come out to play (L. Carrol)
14. How does the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail?
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale
How cheerfully he seems to grin
How neatly spreads his claws
And welcomes little fishes in
With deeply smiling jaws.
– From ‘Journey Through Time in Verse and Rhyme – Poems collected by Heather Thomas’
Now let’s see some fishes and a bird
Nest in a tree and down by the stream
15. ‘Freckled fishes flitting flirting
Floating fast or flowing free
Flicking filmy fins like feathers
Feeding on the flowing sea.’
– Anon
16. Snug within their tiny nests
Baby birds with open beaks
Beg for food the livelong day
Busy parents have no rest
Food they find for their brood
To baby birds the world is good
– From ‘Journey Through Time in Verse and Rhyme – Poems collected by Heather Thomas’
17. Once a little bird went hop hop hop
And I said, little bird will you stop stop stop
I ran to the window to say how do you do
But she shook her little tail and away she flew
– From ‘Journey Through Time in Verse and Rhyme – Poems collected by Heather Thomas’
Thus the day is ended and I close my wee small door.
Tomorrow you may knock again for friends to see once more.