Materials for Activity
- Recorded square-dance music and appropriate music player
Preparation for Activity
- Make sure you have a large, open floor space for this activity.
- In square dancing, a "caller" calls out the steps of the dance. Find recorded square-dance music that includes the calls. There are square dancing CDs for use with children; your local school physical education department may be a good source. See "Find Out More" for additional resources. Be sure to choose a simple dance.
- Optional: Enlist a member of your congregation who is experienced in square dancing to lead or help with this activity.
Description of Activity
Tell the children that after a barn-raising, all the people who helped build the barn would have a party - often inside the barn they had just built. Explain that square dancing needs eight people and is a form of dancing the community might have done to celebrate finishing a barn.
Teach the steps for the dance you will do. Then play the music and lead the children in celebratory dancing.
Including All Participants
If any children have mobility challenges, make sure the space is accessible including room to adapt the dancing to accommodate all participants.
Take gender, popularity, dancing "expertise" and other pressures off the children by forming pairs and squares by counting off. You might have all the children count off "one, two" to make two smaller groups for squares and then "one, two, three, four" for positions in each square.