(upbeat music)
-: Hi, I'm Ciara with Moving Minds Dance,
and I believe that we can learn all things through dance.
So today, we're going to write letters and words
with our movements and our bodies.
Wherever you are, all you need is your body
to do this activity.
We're going to look at some words together,
but if you have books or,
just know what words and letters look like
in different languages and alphabets,
then you can use those too.
We are going to start by drawing pathways. In dance,
we think about how a shape can be straight
or curvy or zig-zagged,
and the pathway that we use just follows that shape.
So a straight pathway draws a straight line
and a curve pathway draws a curvy line,
and a zigzag pathway goes back and forth and back and forth
to draw a zigzag line.
When we read, we look at the shapes that letters make
and have to remember what those look like,
like the letter T,
when we write, we have to be able to draw
the letter on the paper.
So we trace the pathway that those lines make.
Let's trace the pathway of some letters together.
We're going to start with a straight pathway
that goes up and down, like the letter I.
Let's do it all together,
up and down.
Now we're gonna make a curvy pathway like the letter O,
let's do a curvy circle.
You can make it as big or as small as you want,
that was a big one, but we could draw a little O too.
Now, a zigzag can go back and forth
or it can go up and down.
We can draw a letter Z with a back and forth zigzag.
Let's do that all together,
Z, and we can draw a W with an up and down zigzag,
let's try that all together, W.
Good, now let's draw a few letters in order.
We're gonna put them together and see if they make a word.
When we do this, I want you to think about
making these letters as big as you can.
So let's start way up high above our heads
and draw a huge curve to make the letter C,
let's do that one more time together, C.
And then we're going to make a letter A,
starting down low, and there's kind of a zigzag at the top
and a line across the middle.
And then we'll make the letter T,
big line across and a line going down.
C-A-T, let's put all of them together
and see if we can think of what word that spells.
Start up high and draw the letter C,
next letter, A,
next letter, T,
C-A-T,
what does that spell?
Cat, that's right,
we spelled the word cat.
Now we're gonna spell one more word altogether.
We're going to spell your name.
Well, I'm going to spell my name and you can spell yours.
This is what my name looks like,
Ciara.
It has five letters,
C-I-A-R-A,
Ciara.
Your name might look different from mine.
This is a good time in our lesson,
if you want to make sure that you can see your name
in front of you on a piece of paper
or on a wall, anywhere, or even in your brain,
if you can close your eyes
and think about what your name looks like,
that's all you need.
We are going to spell our names together,
but instead of writing it on a piece of paper,
we're going to dance it in the air.
My name has five letters,
so my name dance will have five movements.
Yours might be different from mine, and that's amazing.
All right, let's get started.
The first letter in my name is a C,
what's the first letter in your name?
The second letter in my name is an I,
what's the second letter in your name?
The next letter in my name is an A,
and after that, I have an R,
and the last letter in my name is another A.
You might have more letters than me,
so you can keep going if you're not done yet.
We're going to do our names all together one more time,
spelling every letter in our name,
and then we're gonna make it a little trickier.
Are you ready?
Here we go.
First letter, C-I-A-R-A,
awesome.
All right, we are going to do our names one more time,
but now we're gonna make it a little more exciting
with our dancing.
We're going to think about the fact that
we don't need to write with our finger and our arm,
we can write with any part of our body.
You could write with your elbow
or you could write with your head,
or you could write with your toe on the floor below you
or even your knee on the floor.
You could right above your head with your nose,
or you could write to the side of you with your hip.
You have so many options.
Your body can do so many amazing things.
So we're going to think about
using a different part of our body
for every single movement in our dance.
We're just gonna come up with it on our own in the moment.
So, I'm gonna come over here
and do the first letter of my name with my elbow,
a letter C,
what did you decide?
I'm gonna do a jump for my letter I,
you might do something different.
For my letter A, I'm gonna draw it on the floor
with my toe,
and for my letter R, I'm going to use my head.
And then for my next letter, A,
I'm going to use my knee in the air.
What did you decide for all of your letters?
Let's do them all together one more time,
this is your name dance.
Are you ready?
First letter,
second letter,
third letter,
fourth letter,
fifth letter,
and keep going if you're not done yet,
you might've ended before me too.
Thank you so much for doing that really
fun activity with me.
Now, we only spelled one word today, we spelled our names,
but there are so many more words in the world in English
and in every other language,
you could spell your name in a different language too.
We talked about what my name looks like,
but I have a favorite word.
My favorite word is wonder.
I could do a dance spelling my favorite word.
Do you have a favorite word?
You could make a dance to spell that.
How would you choose what body parts to use
or where to write the letters?
There're so many ideas to play with,
and however you choose to do that,
I hope you have fun.
I'm Ciara with Moving Minds Dance,
and today we wrote words with our bodies.
You can do that wherever you are with new words,
and with more words,
you could write a whole sentence,
but I hope you have fun if you do.
Come back and dance with me again soon.
(upbeat music)