Santa's Stuck!!! Visits 8-12

The next four visits we combined both Mrs. Condie's and Mrs. Jenkins' Class to work on a Christmas performance. The students worked and practiced really hard to perform in front of all the 1st and 2nd grade classes. There dance was based off the book "Santa's Stuck" by Rhonda Gowler Greene. It's a story in which Santa eats way too many Christmas goodies and get's stuck on the way back up the chimney. It takes his reindeer, a mama cat and her six kittens, a dog, and one mouse with a tiny tractor to push Santa out of the chimney

The beginning of the dance was done all together and consisted of almost the entire first half of the book. However, for the last half of the book, the students were split into five groups. Each group was  given their very own page, and they had to create a dance that their group could do for that page. Mrs. Condie, Mrs. Jenkins and I went around and helped the students, but ultimately the students came up with it on their own. The very last part of the book was done all together.

 Once the students were done creating we began practicing doing the entire thing. The only difficult part was helping the students coordinate when their group entered and exited the space. However after a few tries they were able to master it. The performance was done on the schools stage in there gym. The students were so excited, and I had several come up to me to tell me how nervous they were. One even asked if they would get to wear a costume. After they were done performing I had a mom come up to me to tell her son had been talking about it non-stop for the last week.

This was definitely one of my favorite moments during my Arts Bridge experience. The students did such a good job creating their own movement and practicing the dance

Image: http://images.betterworldbooks.com/052/Santa-s-Stuck-9780525472926.jpg