Lisa's Dance Party

One of the highlights of summer is our dance party.  If you have never run one before, they are great fun and easy to put together.  We run ours for 25 2-4 year olds.  Our program lasts approximately 30 minutes. 

Things to consider:
While you need space to dance, your biggest consideration is your sound system.  The more people that you have in the program, the more "chatter" you will have.  This means that you will need a way for the music and your voice to project over it.  We run ours through an ipod that hooks into our sound system.

Even though you register 25 toddlers, there will be more kids at the program.  For example, today 25 registered toddlers showed up, plus 17 big brothers and sisters, 2 babies and 27 parents.  This gave us 71 people for a 25 person program.

When you pick out your songs, you will want a mixture of crazy (ones with jumping, flying, etc.) and ones that will slow things down and help kids to focus on you (ex. I'm a Little Teapot).  I also like to mix the familiar and the new.  I always pull a couple of our favorites from story times so some of the kids can help lead.  It is also fun to find 1-2 songs that use props of some kind.

Song list:
1.  If You're Happy and You Know It by Old Town School of Folk Music on Songs for Wiggleworms
2.  Can You (Point Your Fingers and Do the Twist) by The Wiggles on Dance Party
3.  The Airplane Song by Laurie Berkner on Whaddaya Think of That?-We make airplane puppets to "help" the kids fly.  Check here for an example.
4.  The Monkey Dance by The Wiggles on Yummy Yummy
5.  Wiggle Your Lah-De-Dah by Ralph Covert on All Around Ralph's World
6.  The Goldfish by Laurie Berkner on Victor Vito
7.  I'm a Little Teapot by The Wiggles on Sing a Song of Wiggles
8.  Drivin' In My Car by Ralph Covert on Ralph's World
9.  Super Silly Tango by Mr. Eric and Mr. Michael on Yummy Yellow
10.  Jumping and Counting by Jim Gill on Jim Gill's Irrational Anthem and More Salutes to Nonsense
11. We Will Stomp by Mr. Eric and Mr. Michael on Yummy Yellow-I took craft sticks and attached silly clip art monster pictures to them.  The kids LOVED them.
12.  The Mack Chicken Dance by Greg & Steve on Big Fun

The program turned out great.  Everybody had a great time.  The big favorite of the day was We Will Stomp by Mr. Eric and Mr. Michael (Mr. Eric is Eric Litwin of Pete the Cat fame!).