Dance Tag

If you are looking for a fresh movement idea for your classroom--try Dance Tag.  It's a movement activity I've been doing so long that I don't know where it came from.  Best of all--it's a student favorite!

Dance Tag:

1.  Put on any piece of music that you choose. Faster tempos/upbeat music tends to work best for this activity. 

2.  Set the parameters for movement.  For lower elementary and beginners, I usually say they have to keep their body in one area verses moving around.  This eliminates people running away from the taggers.

3.  Pass out a green scarf to one student and a red scarf to another.  If students get tagged by the red scarf they have to stop and freeze.  If students get tagged by the green scarf, they can dance.  I use these scarves from West Music and they've held up for years.

4.  General scarf rules in my classroom:  "You get what you get, and you don't throw a fit!"  In other words, you get whatever color comes your way and there's no trading.  We also keep scarves off of our head and faces to eliminate germs and other lovely things from being spread :)

5.  Change it up!  If you want to make it more challenging, add more than one green or red scarf.  Also, you can add in a yellow scarf that is "slow motion" dancing.  A blue scarf is "double time" dancing.  What other adaptations can you come up with?  Maybe purple is jumping and brown is marching to the beat!

6.  You can use finger cymbals to signal that scarf holders need to give their scarf to the person closest to them. 

Happy New Year!  I hope your year is filled with wonderful music making and joyful students!