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Ariana Candell. (2013, April). Movement in the Wild: Nature as  Dance Partner. The Earthbody Institute.
https://www.theearthbodyinstitute.com/2017/03/movement-in-the-wild-nature-as-dance-partner/

Brooker, L., Blaise, M., & Edwards, S. (Ed.).(2014). Chapter 4: Make-Believe Play and Self-Regulation. The SAGE handbook of play and learning in early childhood. P.1-20.

Unknown. (Unknown). Creative Dance-Play for Early childhood. Dance Teacing Ideas.
https://danceteachingideas.com/creative-dance-movement-for-toddlers/

Victor Wooten. (2013, December 19). Music as a Language: Victor Wooten at TEDxGabriolaIsland [Video]. Youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zvjW9arAZ0

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The First Nation People have been co-living with Native animals in the wild the past and present. They share the land and water with each other. In my artefact, how amazing it was to see wild birds, possum, insects, domestic pets, adults and children doing different activities whilst sharing the greenery community leisure space peacefully.

Undoubtedly, dramatic plays offer numerous benefits for children's cognitive, language, social and mental developments. In the contextof this activity, social and mental developments are the key focuses. Freud's psychoanalytic theory first called attention to the emotion-regulating function of make-believe (Brooker, Blaise, Edwards, 2014, P.3). Erikson (1950) expanded Freud's vision, proposing that fantasy play enables young children to explore potential roles in their social world. As children enact roles in sociodramatic play, they participate in a miniature social organization in which they must cooperate, regulating their behavior to realize joint play goals(Erikson, cited in Brooker, Blaise, Edwards, 2014, P.3).

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It was such a windy day when I did my on-country visit. I heard the wind buzzed. I felt it blowing my hair drastically and hit on my face. I "could see" it from the sways and shakes of different trees. Inspired by the sensory sensations that the wind triggers me and how aesthetically that objects move with wind motions, a dance experience for children to move with the wind in the nature is to be created. This also echos with the idea made by Ariana(2013): "Our indigenous ancestors danced in rituals to celebrate all aspects of life: birth, death, harvest and rites of passage. They communicated with the spirits of the land and moved with these spirits in ceremony. Dancing in the wild is making a comeback with a modern twist."

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In many public and community greenery spaces, indigenous plants like gum trees are planted to show respect to the native landscape. Indigenous people also make use of native natural resources as their way of living with the nature. Therefore, the musical activity would take place in an outdoor, green environment and make use of any extra natural materials available at the scene, that the land gifts us, in order to encourage children to explore and feel connected with the nature.

In Victor Wooten's TED talk at Gabriola Island in 2013, he suggested that on top of teachiing children musical rules and practice them, it is more important to allow children to use music to express themselves, no matter the music is made 'right' or 'wrong'. Therefore, children would be allow plenty of free explorations of sounds and beats after intentional teaching.

By in-corporating different musical instruments that harmonise different sound effects in beats and tempo in the activity, it makes harmonic soundscapes like an orchestra of various songs voices of birds, dogs, people's laughters and roaring vehicles.

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Children bring their animal soft toys to the outdoor excursion. They imagine themselves as the animals having a picnic and play different games in the garden as a progressive dramatic play.

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Children are given the freedom to explore and visualise "wind movements" by using natural and craft materials. Following that, they are to manipulate their magical wands and liberate their bodies to move like a dance partner of the wind.

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It includes structural and free explorations of different sounds made by recycled containers and natural materials found on-site. In addition, it also introduce children to the concept of musical elements: beats and tempos, by sing a nursery song.

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Venue: Garden
Targeted age-group: 3-5 years old

Children gather their soft toy animals on the picnic mat and introduce themselves as if they are the animals one by one. The teacher role plays as the dalmatian, who initiates the start and helps to develop plots of the drama. Animals greet each others and suggest play activities to do in the outdoor.

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The teacher manipulated the money to hug its new friends.

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The child made the first move to demonstrate manipulating a toy kangaroo to eat a hamburger, after previous teacher's drama expression.

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Activity Plan: Dancing with the wind magic

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Activity Plan: Dancing with the wind magic

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Venue: Garden
Targeted age-group: 3-5 years old

Different colors of tissue papers, sparkle ribbons, strings, sticks and small branches from a gumnut trees are placed on the ground. Children are introduced to different materials.

Children are allowed to have their own choices of how many tissue papers, sparkle ribbons, strings they want and cut them into their desired different lengths, then tie them onto any lengths of sticks they want, in order to create their own magical dancing wands.

Children are guided to observe and explore the movements of the different slings in ever-changing wind conditions. After the visualisation understanding of the gentle breeze and strong winds, they are then asked to close their eye order to feel the caresses, sweeps and rages of the winds on their faces and skins.

Children are then encourage to wave and manipulate their wands in the air and the wind. They move their bodies, core and limbs to dance with the wind. The slings appears like a magical visual effect in their dance.

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The activity aroused natural enjoyment and curiosity in the child to explore object's movements with the wind. Aiming to allow more room for children's own creativity, encourage them to feel and be mindful of their internal emotions arising from the environmental stimulatons (i.e. wind, sunlight, fluttering and waving movements of colorful strings) freedom of body movement, children's dance movements would be open-eneded to them and unplanned. The child's dance movements became more variable and natural as her exploration went on.

However, I expect the child could extend to explore the materials and dance movements more for a longer period. I would add more materials like silken scarfs, long grasses and paper strips in order to provide a wider range of choices to stimulate and refreshen their interest in exploration. In-corporating musical and dramatic elements can enhance the quality of dance experiences as well.

After studying the unit and planning the experience, I realised dance and movement bring benefits in multiple aspects. Dance-play activities encourage young children to practice balance and motor skills while stretching the imagination(Unknown, unknown)(from unit reference).

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The teacher and the child shadowed themselves as the pretend animals to play hide-and-seek.

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Activity Plan: Sounds of Nature, Beats of My Hearts

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Activity Plan: Sounds of Nature, Beats of My Hearts

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Venue: Garden
Targeted age-group: 3-5 years old

Step 1: Place recycled containers (A small Transparent glass jar, a medium-size transparent plastic bottle, a small aluminium can and a small cardboard box) on the ground and introduce them to the children.

Step 2: Engage the child to take turns to use wooden sticks to tap on each container to hear the different unique sounds. After tapping all, allow at least 1 minute for the child to drum freely exploring the different unique sounds. Teacher can guide the child by demonstrating or giving verbal instructions to explore strong and small taps and sounds.

Step 3: The teacher put some rice in a containers and shake it. Ask open-ended question: what is this sound like? what musical instrument it is like?

Step 4: Ask the child to go around the garden in search of small natural materials that can be used as fillings of shakers. Gather the findings and learn about each material.

Step 5: Guide the child to put different amount of materials into different contains. Shake the containers to explore different rustling sounds make. After that, allow at least 1 minute for the child to explore the sounds with different strengths of forces with dfferent containers and materials.

Step 6: Hint the child that they can in-corporate the sticks to tap on the 'shakers'.

Step 7: Ask the child to choose a self-made musical instrument and sing along "Barramundi" song with the child. Demo normal beats for the first 2 time. Demo slow beats for the third and forth time. Demo fast beats for the fifth and sixth time.

"Barramundi, barramundi, kangaroo, kangaroo.
Emu and koala, emu and koala, cockatoo."

Step 8: "Give a round of applause" by using the musical instruments. Let the flow go with what the child's heart decide to continue with free sound and material explorations or testing beats and tempo.

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The child was excited and interested in exploring and making sounds using sticks and different containers. She could specifically use the musical terms: high pitch and low pitch. Unexpectedly, the child discovered the sound made by beating on the bag of rice and found it fascinating. Children's perspective can be out of adults' "prescriptions".

When it comes to collect natural materials to create own musical instrument, the child did not collect lots of things as I expected. She brought back some more sticks and leaves. Therefore, I went again with her to point out the gumnuts, rocks, crushed rocks and barks.

From this experience, I learn that children needs more oportunities on creative music-making, despite our traditional ways of teaching designated songs and manipulating typical western musical instruments. As future practices, I would introduce different kind of musical instruments around the world to them to inspire their ideas and let them do more experiements on open-ended natural material and loose parts.

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The teacher and the child shadowed themselves as the pretend animals to play hide-and-seek.

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The teacher extend the imaginary play by pretending to chase after real pigeons amd seagulls by using a dalmation soft toy, asking the bird to play with us and teache them to fly.

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With the child familiar imaginary friends, their soft toys, children feel comfortable to be engaged into the drama.

However, the initiation and development of the drama more depended on the teacher's lead, due to the lack of imaginative ideas of the child.

The term scaffolding has been used to describe the support that adults (or older peers) provide as children develop skills within their Zone of Proximal Development (Wood, cited in Brooker, Blaise, Edwards, 2014, P.4). A scaffolding approach would increase children's autonomy and enhance abilities by providing spontaneous supports when needed. In my future practice, I hope to embed and model more drama elements in my intentional teaching, and hence support childrens' dramatic play to be more child-orientated by using a scaffolding approach to intervene, in order to facilitate, provoke and extend imaginations.