Curriculum & Philosophy

Talking Hands Talking Feet assists teachers and parents to provide children enhanced opportunity for immersion, assimilation, call and response and connective learning processes within a vibrant range of relevant subjects and themes.

Our Aims and Purposes:

• To provide vital experience that demonstrates the value of the arts as essential to development and education.
• To create pathways of connection and learning through the media of integrated music and dance that encourages and promotes individual and ensemble genius and virtuosity.
• To generate the essence of discovery fortified with natural research ways and love of the pursuit of truth.
• To engender genuine belief and confidence in oneself and the mosaic of possibilities working with others.
• To encourage bold and versatile expression with quality content.
• To foster value and respect for oneself, one’s body, one’s family and one’s community life.
• To provide an ecology of safety and encouragement to the inner life of each person and their natural participation.
• To help develop skill and confidence in communication and human theater arts.
• To generate fun and inspiring process oriented work that promotes uninhibited creativity and ability to respond.

Music and Dance are brilliant educators. They are languages in their own right; "spoken" in every land, bridging the gap between people and places, allowing understanding that often surpasses words alone. More importantly, music and dance speak direct to the inner life wonder and ways of human beings. This is where Talking Hands Talking Feet® music and dance education makes its start. Our foundation can be described around the following five point framework: Communication, Connections, Content, Creativity and Confidence

Communication

Music, song, dance and story-play encourage and promote greater range and fluency of expression in so many marvelous ways... switching on the natural intelligences latent in the human "orchestra". Our aim is to foster and help liberate the inherent love and joy of versatile and uninhibited communication.

Connections

Content

You become what you process. That's why content is so important! The songs, dances and stories used in our curriculum are packed with bright learning vitamins and values. The repertoire is huge; much of it is drawn from the rich inheritance of world folk and ethnic tradition. But most of the material is original, designed for various themes including:

• The Human Body
• The Human Story / Human Tribe
• The World of Color
• The Wonders of the World
• Plants and Animals
• People and Places

• Numbers and Cycles
• World of Sound
• Earth Day/ Natural Worlds
• Math

Creativity

Our teaching methodology is process oriented with focus on the quality of content generated between ourselves and the young participants. It works by invitation, contagion, immersion, repetition and transference, sprinkled with a good dose of joy, delight, fun and laughter. The result is a kind of spontaneous creativity that'll knock your socks off! Here's some of what we do to make it happen:

• Musical Warm-ups
• Physical Warm-ups
• Rhythm Exercises
• Rhythm Games
• Mind Liveners
• Memory Sequence Songs
• Color Songs & Rhythms
• The World of Instruments
• Follow Your Ear - Improvisation Training
• Original Theme Songs with Movement Expression
• Percussion and Instrument Accompaniment
• Color Dances
• Story Plays
• Musical Concepts
• World Songs & Music
• Composing Song and Dance
• Choreographed Form Dances
• Stories and Puppet Theater
• Story Dances / Creative Dance

Confidence

Confidence is the natural result and overspill of being able to do; being able to COMMUNICATE with growing versatility, wit and perception; being able to make new CONNECTIONS with growing sensitivity and awareness; being able to express oneself using a broad spectrum of quality CONTENT; and being able to respond CREATIVELY with insight and self-generated enthusiasm, These are all ingredients of genuine self trust and CONFIDENCE.

We have seen so many young lives grow into bright confident respectful and very talented individuals. We are so honored and inspired that Talking Hands Talking Feet® has played a significant part in their lives. We invite you to check it out for the children in your care and for you too!

Kaleidoscope! Ages 6-12
Encompassment of Work

1. Core Qualities
2. Rhythm & Coordination Training
3. Rhythm & Music Training
4. Dance & Movement Training
5. Song Composition & Singing
6. Theater Arts Training
7. Language Arts Enlivenment
8. Human Body Discovery
9. Natural Worlds Discovery
10. World Cultures Research

1. Core Qualities:
These are the principle values and qualities fundamental to our program and up front in us as educators: trust, value, care, confidence, respect, versatility, quality, creativity, consistency, cohesion, discipline, regularity, constancy, diversity, integration, content, companionship, encouragement, team work, discovery, virtuosity, humor, fluency, humanity, honesty, humility, patience, perseverance, willingness, kindness and generosity.

2. Rhythm & Coordination Training:
All of the following areas include a progression of multiple exercises. We have highlighted the progression in Thai Stick Dancing as an example.
  a. Co-ordination exercises.
  b. Rhythm exercises. Dancing body rhythms and body rhythm sequences.
  c. Rhythm sticks.
  d. Thai sticks.
     i. Basic familiarization
     ii. Improvisation
     iii. Partnering patterns with hands & feet
     iv. Multiple sticks
     v. Choreographed patterns
     vi. Including other media - throw sticks, balls, hand patterns, singing.
  e. Basket Ball rhythm work - Pentaball

3. Rhythm & Music Training:
  a. Multiple rhythm exercises.
     i. Hands & Feet
     ii. Drums & Sticks
     iii. Boom whackers
     iv. Various percussion instruments
  b. Color rhythm work
  c. Color music work
     i. Color modes
     ii. Catching and matching the frequency
     iii. Frequency modulation
     iv. World music comparison
  d. Composition & improvisation training
  e. Instrument training
  f. Ensemble play & performance training
  g. Notation
  h. Instrument making workshops

4. Dance & Movement Training:
  a. Dance improvisation and choreography -
     i. Creative dance grids
     ii. Movement through color
     iii. Story dances
     iv. Opening up themes and researches
     v. Specific messages
     vi. The 3 R’s through movement
     vii. Form dances
     viii. Moving triangles
  b. Movement enactment of songs
  c. Performance training

5. Song Composition & Singing:
  a. Rhyming mind liveners
  b. Lyrics and poetry immersion
  c. Writing songs
  d. Vocal training
  e. Ensemble singing

6. Theater Arts Training:
  a. Storytelling
  b. Oratory
  c. Story enactment
  d. Song enactment
  e. History enactment (micro-musicals)

7. Language Arts Enlivenment:
  a. Mind liveners - mental fluency exercises
  b. Vocabulary building exercises
  c. The love of language discovery including bilingual song exploration
  d. Working a theme with phrases, poems, notions and ideas as a platform for composition of music, dance, song, story…
  e. Lyrics & poetry
  f. Song & story composition
  g. Oratory arts
  h. World folklore and mythology

8. Human Body Discovery:
The workings of the human body through theater, music and dance. Going into depth and appreciation from basic anatomy, the balances of the many systems into specifics such as the workings of the immune system.

9. Natural Worlds Discovery:
  a. Understandings of nature expressed through theater, music and dance.
  b. Deepening discovery work
  c. Field trips - to do our work ‘in the field’!

10. World Cultures Research:
  a. Comparison work through the medias of music, story and dance
  b. Discovery grids: color, number, symbol, planetary cycles, shapes & form, language, imagery, geography…
  c. Learning folk styles from around the world