Caitie is sharing tips for using the preschool song “The Skeleton Dance” in the classroom and at home for lots of fun learning with little ones. She has lots of great ideas! And she’ll lead us through the song using gestures – an excellent way to introduce a song to children. “The Skeleton Dance” is a fun dance song for learning parts of the body around Halloween.
Try these ideas in the classroom or at home!
- This is a great song to sing at Halloween time to review body parts and for an active break. It’s also a fun dance song to include at a Halloween party to get everybody up and moving.
- This song can also be used year round. It’s a great way to introduce different body parts that aren’t often included in other children’s songs, like the thigh and hip.
- It’s a great song to use when you are learning about the human body. Talk to your students about our bones and how they are connected throughout our body. Each one is attached to another so we can dance and jump and move all together.
- Try making some pretend skeleton bones cut from pieces of white paper and have your students put them together to build a skeleton. In the song, we sing about the foot bone, the leg, the knee, the thigh, the hip and the backbone. You can also include arms and a head or skull for your students to complete their skeleton. Once the skeletons are built, you can sing the song to check their work and point to each bone as you go.
- Try drawing each bone on the board as you sing the song. With each line, the skeleton will grow more complete. Once the song is finished, you can ask your students what other bones you need to add in to finish the skeleton, and add them on. Then sing the song again, this time pointing to each bone. You can even try singing the song without the music and singing about the other bones you added to the skeleton as a class.
More resources for this song (1)
