Performance Day

We were nervous and excited for our performance today!

We were the first group to perform!

We are so proud of our performance today!

After our performance Teddy Anderson did a dance with 30 hoops.

Lots of parents came and they filled up the whole stage. Thank you for coming! 

This is how Teddy ended his performance with 30 hoops.

When he danced he made a nest with the hoops and then he put the earth inside the nest.

He also made a caterpillar with the hoops.

We were so lucky to have him at our school.

We had such a great week!

Preparing For The Performance...

Our performance is tomorrow at 1:30.  All parents are invited and we hope that you can come and watch.  We have been working very hard to get ready for tomorrow.

Today we practiced some of the moves that we will perform tomorrow for you. 

Today the message that Teddy shared was that we shouldn't take the easy way to do something.  That means, that you should work hard and believe in yourself.  That's the only way to get better is through hard work.

He said that if we are nervous tomorrow we should watch him and do what he does, trying the things that we  are comfortable with.

Teddy showed us how he could juggle three hoops in the air.  It took him a lot of practice to be able to do it, even though sometimes he felt like giving up when he was learning it.

He read us a story today.  It was about the medicine wheel.

The lesson in the story was that we are all on this earth together and that we are all different but we all have to work and  live together in peace and acceptance.

The book was about a hoop dancer that danced with the hoops.  When he made the earth ball with his hoops it was one big earth to show the idea that everyone has to work together.

Yellow was the sun.

White was the moon.

Red was love.

Black was shadow.

Making the earth with the hoops is one of the hardest things to do.

We hope you can come and watch us tomorrow.

We learned how to do the butterfly, caterpillar and horse.  You may see them tomorrow...

Hoop Dancing

Today we began working wth our three hoops to practice some of the dance moves.  We had two sessions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.  In the afternoon we practiced making some of the animals with our hoops.  All the grade one and two classes were in the gym together this afternoon.
Our message today was to never give up and to keep trying.  It is okay to make mistakes and to do hard things.

Here are some photos of our hoop dancing today.

Hoop Making

Today we met Teddy Anderson.  We watched him do a hoop dance performance this morning.  He is from Victoria.  His message to us was that we should all be putting good stuff in our hearts and then that is how we will treat other people.  He also said that we should be proud of our background and where we have come from.  He played a flute with eagles on it and he told us that the eagle represents  his ancestors.  When they see an eagle flying in the sky they stop and watch it because it is watching over them.  He showed us some dances and he recreated different animals through his movements and hoops.  We loved watching him dance.  He had drumming and First Nations singing in the background as he danced.

  He even got the audience involved.  Some of the teachers picked four or five students to stand and try a hoop dance along with Teddy. He even had some of the teachers join in.

Our second session with him today we had to make our hoops.  When we made our hoops we got to choose from colored duct tape. We had lots of colors to choose from.  We each had to make three hoops and we all had to finish making our hoops today.  We had to use extra class time to finish.

Here is how we made them:
 We used black plastic piping to make the hoops.  We had to stand up and a grown-up had to measure it to be two inches taller than our head and then the grown-up had to cut it.  Next we had to go to a cleaning station and wipe down the hoop.  We had to go and get a white connecter to attach the hoop ends together.  We had to tape the connected spot with a color that we didn't mind covering up.  After it was covered up we got to choose our own colors that we wanted our hoops to be.  It took a long time to tape all the way around the hoop.  After all the taping was done, we had to make four marker spots in each quarter of the hoop, using a different color of tape.

We are so excited to see what he will teach us tomorrow.