I usually don’t post ideas until I try them with my dancers, but I am going to try this dance on Saturday and thought maybe you might want to plan to do it in your classes for V day. I had this idea on the train yesterday and I think it’s going to be so fun! For valentines day last year I made these. Here is my idea for designing a whole class with X’s and O’s.
1) X and O Exploration: How many ways can you make an X and an O with your body? X’s are straight, O’s are round. Can you make an X standing up, how about on the floor? Can you make an O down low, what about up high? Can you travel your X and O? Can you make them with a partner? Back to back? With different body parts? Make it jump, make it roll? The possibilities are endless!
2) Hugs and Kisses Pattern: Assign half the class to an X and half to an O. The see if they can line up every other one to make a pattern. I don’t know about your dancers but my dancers love to make patterns! XOXO until all of the hugs and kisses are in the line.
3) XO Transformers: Make an X or an O and then ask them to transform into the other one in 8, 4, 2, or 1 count. For 8 counts the transformation will be very slow, for 1 count it will be so fast!
Have you ever tried a whole themed class? This is will be so fun to incorporate plus it teaches about shapes! Are you doing any Valentines Day Dances? I would love to hear! 
Maria Hanley is an independent early childhood dance educator in New York City.
Maria serves on the 
Maria, I really love these suggestions. We have a different theme every week, and next week is “I HEART Dancing” and I will definitely be incorporating Xs and Os. Thank you so much for continuing to inspire!
Yay Kim!! I’m so glad. I thought teachers would want to use it next week so I posted it so they could get ideas early. Let me know how it goes!
This was amazing! We made small Xs (with their fingers) and big Xs (with their bodies), same with Os. I can’t believe how they were able to do it all on their own, it’s amazing how they love to problem solve. While we were making Os, a couple of them suggested we try “hearts”. Pretty cool!
so glad they loved exploring! I will come up with some more posts on shapes so you can share them with your students!
These are awesome suggestions– and much needed this saturday morning. Thanks for the inspiration!
yay Jacqui! I’m so glad you could use the ideas!
Thank you Maria…this is great and exactly the type of Valentine’s lesson I’ve been searching for-can’t wait to try it!
Diana, thanks so much for stopping by! I always try to come up with a themed lesson plan, but some holidays are just difficult. This one just came to me. Hopefully they will all do that! Let me know how it goes!
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