Flying Dance

Look at some pictures of birds in flight or observe some outside.

• Can the children use their hands together to resemble wings? Try flapping them gently and experimenting with the movement and quality of flight.

• Children now walk around the room. Do their bodies feel heavy? Can they imagine being able to lift off the ground just a little bit? Where would they feel the wings about to lift them? Feel the pull of the wings.
  
  
• As children start to move a little faster, begin to introduce words such as rise, climb, sail and soar and finally drop down.
  
  
• Ask the children to stand still in a space – they should imagine themselves in a nest on a high ledge. The sky is blue and there is a light breeze. As they look down, what can they see? How do they feel? They move a foot out and flap a little, then move back into the safety of the nest.

• Eventually, they have the confidence to step out, to soar and swoop up, to hover and look down. Do they feel weightless?

• Finally head back to the nest and rest under a wing.

• Try putting all the pieces of the dance together to music, e.g. Vaughan Williams - “The Lark Ascending”. Or chose a poem to add over the music.

• Finally, cool down by lying on the floor. Can the children feel the weight of their bodies on the floor? Imagine themselves being lifted and feeling weightless again. Now sink back into their bodies and relax.

The dance could also be adapted for the different characters in the play who attempt to fly and the methods they use.

A Machine to Make People Fly

Look at some pictures of designs for flying machines from the past and read about the history of flying in the science section. Identify some parts such as pedals, wheels and gears. As a class, begin to think about ideas of what parts could go together to make a machine and what noises they would make.

Tell the class that they are going to invent an imaginary machine which people can enter walking and come out flying. Try drawing this imaginary machine or using construction kits to make one.

In groups of 3 or 4, the children now think about a movement and a noise for their part of the machine, such as cogs turning or a hammer hitting a peg (children jumping up and down). Now put all of the children together in a line or circle and set the machine going. Children are selected to go through the machine – does it work?

Follow on with some poetry using the sounds and movement of the machine or some creative writing about some children who visit a mad professor who has invented a machine to make people fly.

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