First Day of Co-op!

As I was gathering my materials in the morning to get ready to go to co-op, my 3 year old, we’ll call her Sugar Plum, saw the copper rods and said, “What’s that, mommy?”  I said, “Those are the copper rods for Eurythmy.”  Sugar Plum: “Oh!  For My-rhythmy?”  Me: “No, for Eurythmy that I do at co-op.  We are going to co-op today.”  Sugar Plum: “My-rhythmy at co-op today?!  Oh yay!”  Me: “Sure, Sugar Plum, sure…”  So I guess to a 3yo it’s not YOUR-rhythmy, it’s MY-rhythmy!!  So that was a great start to my day!  Gave me a good laugh!  Today was the first day for our co-op!  It went amazingly well! These kids are so intelligent.  Unfortunately I did not get any pictures because I was so busy with the kids.  Our co-op is broken into 3 different age groups (for time reasons and number of children).  We have our preschool/kindy group, Grade 1-3 (before the 9yo change), and Grade 4 and up (after 9yo change).

For the preschool/kindy class our main lesson was a story called, Autumn.  We talked about what season was getting ready to leave and what season was coming up.  Then we talked a little about Autumn and how different animals get ready for the winter during Autumn.  Then we had our story which was about the little animals growing cold and looking for Mother Earth’s cave.  When they found it, there was a little dwarf there to cover them and make them warm.  Then we sang a little song to put the animals to sleep.  Those kids were so mesmerized!  We did the motions to go with it and the kids really got into it.  You could see how they really lived in their imaginations!  They “put on” that animal or dwarf part.  I just love this stage!

For the Grade 1-3 class I told a story called Golden Apples.  I wanted them to know the story first before doing the motions because I want their help in recalling what will happen next.  This age also loves guessing at what kind of motion we will be doing.  And most of the time, their motions are very similar to the Eurythmy gesture!  That just shows you how natural it can be!   We also did some mirror image form walking.  First we had to travel to the “Kingdom of Straights and Curves” by walking a spiral.  Then for the mirror image part, we played a game called Horse training.  They had to prance like a pony along side their partner, down the middle of the isle, around the stables, and back up to the top where they started.  But you have to stay aligned with your partner!  This posed a great challenge for them, but they did not want to stop until they got it right!

For the Grade 4+ class, we did multiple things.  A lot of them are moving from the FEELING stage into the THINKING stage and need lots of movement of different kinds in order to connect their FEELING and THINKING together.  First I challenged them with the “warm up exercise” (look it up on YouTube, it is FANTASTIC)!  We had lots of laughs there!  Then we reviewed some letter gestures we learned last year, walked some basic forms (circle, triangle, square), then learned to walk them while always facing the audience!  They LOVED this challenge.  They kept finding that they were accidentally shrinking and growing and lop-siding the forms.  They wanted to keep at it until it was right!  Finally, we ended with some basic copper rod exercises and a game called “Tipping Towers” (you can find the description of this game under “Copper Rods”  tab of my website).   The kids LOVED it!

So overall, it was a great first day!  The kids had fun; I had fun! I know where I need to make improvements and what worked out great!  I can’t wait until next Monday!

My stories and activities today were from Movement for the Child Young by Estelle Breyer and Leaving Room for the Angels by Reg Down.