Teacher's Role for Arts Activities:
Kwanzaa A Dance of Your Own Using a West African Traditional Dance Model
by Peggy Visacarro
http://herbergercollege.asu.edu/artswork/arts/students/holidays/kwanzaa01.htm

The social studies focus is:

• Understanding the importance of Americans sharing and supporting certain values and beliefs. Kwanzaa, as Dr. Visicarro explains, is created to improve the self-image of the participants and the sense of community and commitment to those in the community. Goals for all of us to emulate!
• An introduction to African culture - particularly that of Ghana and the Giannas
• Understanding that the United States has many different cultures that help us to understand ourselves as both individuals and members of various groups. Human cultures exhibit both similarities and differences. We all, for example, have systems of beliefs, knowledge, values, and traditions. Each system also is unique. In a democratic and multicultural society, students need to understand multiple perspectives that derive from different cultural vantage points. This understanding will allow them to relate to people in our nation and throughout the world.

Dance skills to learn:

• Identifying and demonstrating movement elements and skills in performing dance
  1. Accurately demonstrate nonlocomotor/axial movements (such as bend, twist, stretch, swing)
  2. Accurately demonstrate basic locomotor movements (such as walk, run, hop, jump, leap, gallop, slide, and skip), traveling forward, backward, sideward, diagonally, and turning.
  3. Demonstrate accuracy in moving to a musical beat and responding to changes in tempo
  4. Demonstrate kinesthetic awareness, concentration, and focus in performing movement skills.
  5. Demonstrate the ability to define and maintain personal space
• Understanding choreographic principles, processes, and structures
  1. Improvise, create, and perform dances based on their own ideas and concepts from other sources
  2. Create a dance phrase, accurately repeat it
  3. Demonstrate the ability to work effectively alone and with a partner
• Demonstrating and understanding dance in various cultures and historical period

Vocabulary: ancestors, behavior, celebrate, contribute, cooperative, creativity, cultures, customs, emphasize, experiences, feast, focus, harvest, interact, precise, principles, symbolize, traditions, trinity, unity, universal, values

The text has three sections:

• Africa, that includes information about the continent and suggests further research on Ghana and the Giannas, whose culture is the source for Kwanzaa. If you chose to do this, http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/K-12/
  menu_EduKNTR.html will be helpful.
• Celebrating Kwanzaa which describes the origin and rituals of the holiday
• Traditional West African Dance, Music, and Song

This is followed by instructions to create a gestural dance and a craft project of making a Kwanzaa mat.

Kwanzaa: A Dance of Your Own Using a West African Traditional Dance Model

http://herbergercollege.asu.edu/artswork/arts/students/holidays/kwanzaa04.htm

Vocabulary: gestural, locomotor, nonlocomotor, rhythm, sequence, stationary, syncopate, theme. torso

Dr. Visacarro's instructions for the students are very clear. Read them with the students; then, step by step take them through the dance process, repeat the instructions, commenting on their ability to follow the directions, rewarding their work as you go.

Weave A Kwanzaa Mat, from Robbie Daniels
http://herbergercollege.asu.edu/artswork/arts/students/holidays/kwanzaa05.htm

This is a very simple activity, but it may reinforce some of the ideas about the holiday. Again, the instructions for the children to read are very clear. Depending on the age of your class, you may choose to cut the lines in the black paper and the strips of read and green paper. If they are a bit older they will be able to do this for themselves and get a bit of practice with a ruler.

      

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