Guest Post: Connie Dow!!

Ladies & gentleman. My first blog interview!!!!
Drum-roll please.........................

Connie, please take a moment and introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your background.

"Hello Fellow Friends and Fans of Debbie,

My name is Connie Bergstein Dow. I am thrilled to contribute my ideas here in Debbie’s blog! I am a dance educator and author. I was the little girl who was scared of gym class and was always chosen last for any playground sports team. I also fell down a lot, and was clumsy and felt as if I couldn’t get the parts of my body to work together. My parents decided to try me in some dance classes, and lo and behold, I found out I wasn’t so much uncoordinated as just very flexible and needed to gain strength and body awareness. Dance was the gift that I needed to help me develop confidence and grace. I loved it so much that I never wanted to stop, and have been very fortunate to have a career in the field of dance.

I studied dance at Denison University, and then received my MFA from the University of Michigan. I was a professional dancer for 10 years, and have been a dance/movement teacher for over 40. For the last 7 years I have been writing about the art of dance, and particularly about bringing movement opportunities to young children. I have written two books and several articles about movement."

Thanks so much, Connie. How about starting off by telling our reading audience how the two of us were introduced to each other?

"I met Debbie through our mutual friend Mimi Brodsky Chenfeld during a moment of serendipity at the 2007 NAEYC convention in Chicago. I was telling Mim about the release of my first book (Dance, Turn, Hop, Learn! Enriching Movement Activities for Preschoolers), and explaining to her that I wanted to team up with a musician for my next book. She said, “Well, then you must get together with Debbie Clement!” Just at that very moment, Debbie appeared out of the crowd of thousands of attendees, and the seed was planted for our future collaborations. I have had the privilege of working with Debbie at OAEYC conferences, at the Ohioana Book Festival, and for the past two years, on our new book, One, Two, What Can I Do? Dance and Music for the Whole Day. Dance and music are natural companions, so bringing together Debbie’s music and my movement activities was a natural as well."

Great! Now I'm so eager for you to share what your goals were with the creation of your new book, our collaborative project.

"I had many goals in mind when I began writing this book. First and foremost, I wanted the format to be extremely teacher-friendly. Having Debbie’s music as a resource for the teachers would be a huge plus. The teacher can choose the activity based on the musical selection, or based on any number of other ways that the book is organized: the daily routine, available space, subject matter, etc.

The chapters in the book are based on the child’s day; the opening chapter offers greeting activities, followed by a chapter on movement for circle time. Successive chapters address lessons about language arts, math, science, and social studies, transitions, large motor skills, and quiet-down activities. The last section offers lots of ideas for creating dance and music presentations with young children.

Another goal was to help educators teach, reinforce, and have fun with age-appropriate movement skills. Throughout the whole book, there are tips for refining these skills in young children.

A theme running throughout the book, and another extremely important concept that I wanted to address, is encouraging and nurturing creativity in children. A child may try to respond to a movement prompt about making a letter shape in his body, for example. He may not even remotely resemble the letter in his attempt, but he is still learning. He is recognizing the letter, listening to and following movement instructions, and attempting to make the letter shape in his body, and thereby learning new concepts kinesthetically. The creative aspect of this exercise, making letter shapes in the body (it may be standing, jumping, on the floor, sitting, kneeling) is the child’s approaching a task through movement and body awareness. Many children who do not excel in other arenas might find their creative spark through movement."

***** Here ends today's installment: Part I with Connie Dow. I will work diligently to get the rest of our initial interview posted tomorrow, before I leave for SDE's ITK event in Vegas. In the second portion of Connie's interview she addresses "Teacher Tips" and I know that will be of significant interest. It is our intent to have Connie be a 'regular' feature here at RainbowsWithinReach, taking residence as our official authority on Dance/Movement. She is happy to address questions and concerns from readers in upcoming appearances. Please feel free to leave your questions in the comment section here on the blog.

[Aren't you glad I'm taking that 31 Day Build a Better Blog Challenge? You can teach an old dog new tricks, after-all.]