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Use this website with Beverley Paine's Getting Started with Home Schooling - Practical Considerations to help you develop your own educational curriculum to suit your family situation, beliefs and lifestyle. The checklists can help you identify your children's current educational skill level in each subject area, as well as find any 'gaps' in their learning, plan what they need to cover or keep track of what has been learned. As you can appreciate this website is continuously under development... It's our aim to add pages on a regular basis in all curriculum areas: check back frequently. We hope you enjoy the articles and activities and find the links and recommended resources useful. Over the next year we will be working our way through each subject area and writing fresh, new content. |
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A Natural Learning Curriculum Activity
© Beverley Paine, Aug 05
As a kid I watched every Shirley Temple movie at least once! I loved musicals and longed to dance like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, especially the tap dancing. Why this passion didn't translate into dance lessons is a mystery. Perhaps my parents didn't take me seriously, or perhaps I danced in head and kept my love for its energy and exuberance a secret.
Laurel Schmidt, the author of Seven Times Smarter, 50 Activities, Games, and Projects to Develop the Seven Intelligences of Your Child believes the attraction of children to tap dancing is the noise: "Tapping is supremely kinaesthetic. Intense sensations arrive through the joints and muscles, amplified with a range of sharp, scratchy sounds." (page 43)
She suggests a simple way to encourage children to have a go at tap dancing - "happy feet" - is to hand them a pair of old boots or shoes, a few coins, a tube of heavy duty glue and let them work out how to arrange the coins to get the get the best sound. All they need then is a nice hard surface to tap against; the garage floor, playground, old wooden or lino floor that has seen it's best days.
Let them work out their own rhythms or find some suitable music. If the noise is all a bit too much for you, rather than discourage the children, find something to do a long way from those tapping feet! Dancing is probably the easiest and most enjoyable way to stay fit. According to Laurel , the physical gains include "strength, endurance, flexibility, balance, dexterity, coordination, expressiveness, and good reflexes." For children with a tendency to gain weight, dancing is a great way to burn excess calories.
Australia 's Tap Dogs popularised tap dancing, especially for guys, about a decade ago. Riverdance glamorised another form of tap. Both are extremely energetic and a lot of fun.
Theater Review: Tapdogs
Nine guys from Australia have been showing their tap dancing talent off for four years now, travelling all over the world
www.teenink.com/Past/1998/9955.html
Tap Dance in Films
A Few Movies That Include Tap Dancing (available on video). The titles below are linked to the Internet Movie Database site. ...
www. tap dance.org/ tap / tap films.htm
Riverdance - The Tenth Anniversary
The official web site for the Riverdance company. Information on all three touring company's with photos, biographies, tour dates, message board, ... www. riverdance .com/
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Text & Images on this site Copyright © 1999-2008 Beverley Paine. All rights reserved. Please note that the opinions and articles included in the suite of Homeschool Australia websites are not necessarily those of Beverley and Robin Paine, nor do we endorse or necessarily recommend products (other than our own) listed in contributed articles, links, pages, or advertisements.