Sarah Lu added a new element to our music exploration at circle today. She led the children through a choreography game. For three different instruments they picked a movement to correspond with its sound.
The group decided that the movement to go with the bells would be jumping up and down. Jumping in such a way to match the tempo at which the bells were shook. Then they added spinning to correspond with the shaker egg and swinging your arms to correspond with the hand drum. It was with the arm swinging that they started to appear–little pink tongues sticking out between lips and teeth.
The children practiced these movements with Sarah Lu working the instruments. Then she formed small trios who took turns being the band. Now everyone dancing had to listen for the three different instruments–sometimes combining the movements if they heard more than one. And the band members were challenged to try and match each other’s tempo and volume or to communicate verbally or non-verbally when they wanted to play solos. With all this tricky concentrating, more and more tongues made their way into the open.
Not only musician tongues, but also dancer tongues (check out the back row).
The general consensus (on the internet) is that people stick their tongues out while concentrating in order to lessen the amount of information/processing their brains are doing so they can focus additional brain power on the task at hand. In part because we use our tongues for language, tongues and their complex movements can take up a significant amount of brain energy.
All these little tongues on display is one cue that for many of these preschoolers the challenge of this experience was just the right mixture of fun and difficult, their brains were working hard.