Tonight’s the night! Invite a friend and join Ms. Y. and her big band for a swing dance party! In our music history lessons, we go waaaay back to the 1940s when music was live and swinging. We watched swing dancers killing it on the dance floor and got “In The Mood” by learning about bandleaders like Benny Goodman, Count Basie, and Cab Calloway. We also learned that dancers would “swing” their partners around so fast, it’s like they were going back and forth on a swing.
We pretended that we were hosting a swing dance party, and we made posters and invitations to tell our friends to come. Back then, things were in black and white, so to put things fully into perspective, I only passed out black and gray colored pencils to make our designs. I made a sheet of clipart for students to cut and paste.
Once we chose the pictures we liked, we cut them out, arranged them onto a blank sheet of paper, and glued them down. Then, we filled in extra designs and words with black or gray colored pencils. We’re learning what music notes look like, so of course we added some of those.