Winter Wiggles

by Teresa Jennings

In the classroom or in a performance, here's an opportunity for your kids to release all that pent up energy from being stuck inside during the cold winter months. The lyrics are deliberately basic and easy to learn so that they don't upstage the important stuff: the wiggling! Actually, we have marked the music with suggestions for movement, which does include the wiggles. But it's not just constant. For example, in the intro, we suggest bouncing to the beat for the first three bars. In bar 4, kids wiggle for exactly one bar, then resume bouncing. In measure 12, they actually have to totally freeze, so there is a bit of concentration required. The all-out wiggle fest finally gets going at the chorus, which starts at bar 13. Be sure to help them listen for the end of the wiggling part.

Actually, this next section is the best part of the song. Well, to us anyway. At bar 18, the tune goes into a halftime groove, which by comparison, feels more like it's floating. So we suggest that kids wiggle in slow motion. What a hoot!

Of course, you don't have to follow our suggestions. You can devise your own wiggle plan, or better yet, let your students come up with one.

Text is taken from Music K-8 magazine.