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Dynamic Play and Creative Movement offers effective and accessible methods to supplement elementary education for young children using dance, movement, and play.
Imagination, physical energy, and the need for self-expression are childhood qualities recognized by parents but are not sufficiently valued to be applied to formal education. Yet when valued as natural endowments, they might intelligently be used to increase a child's perceptive abilities and self-confidence, essential to learning. These three qualities combine in dynamic play, a term devised by the author to describe an approach to learning. Through physical participation, children deal with concepts, ideas, and emotions while they reach out to touch a vast world of people, animals, nature, and activities. The chapters provide for improvisations in music, visual art, drama and stories in addition to topics related to the changing seasons, sports, school subjects, travel, games, and many other elements of the natural and man-made world. Research about the correlation of movement to brain activity is included to support the thesis that creative movement is an effective adjunct to learning.
Therapists, counselors, and preschool and elementary teachers will find this easily adaptable material valuable in fostering perception, insight, and cognitive understanding in children.
List of contents
Part One: Dynamic Play 1. Journey of Discovery 2. Channeling Physical Energy, Imagination and Expression 3. Imagination: Origin of Individuality 4. Getting Started 5. Questions and Answers Part Two: Movement and Brain Connections 6. Brain Plasticity and Exercise 7. The Developing Brain 8. The Brain, Movement and Dance Part Three: The Creative Conquest of Space 9. Taking Off 10. Ground Instruments 11. Flight Patterns Part Four: Improvisations 12. Getting Started 13. Improvisations on Nature 14. Improvisations on the Seasons 15. Improvisations on the Visual Arts 16. Improvisations on the Performing Arts 17. Improvisations on Holidays 18. School Projects 19. Fun and Games Part Five: Creative Movement Plays 20. Dramatic Plays 21. The Stories
About the author
Judith Peck, professor emerita of art, is a sculptor and author with work in eighty collections, including the Yale Gallery of Art, the Ghetto Fighters Museum in Israel, libraries, universities, and cultural and religious institutions here and abroad. Dr. Peck has published 8 non-fiction books and 2 children's books and authored a story collection and screenplay. She holds a doctoral degree from New York University and two masters degrees from Columbia University. She is completing a 4th novel about an art therapist involved in a school shooting. Judith lives in Mahwah, New Jersey.
Summary
Dynamic Play and Creative Movement offers effective and accessible methods to supplement elementary education for young children using dance, movement, and play.
