Explaining Songs and Dances around the World

1. MUSIC AND DANCE PROJECTS
with Davide and Barbara
As a tradition, the institute “A. Gramsci” has carried out the music project in order to let the
children know songs and dances from other countries. The music teachers Barbara and Davide
taught our students some songs from Europe and a song from Australia. They came once a week
for two months and on the 5 th of February, we held the final performance. Davide worked with
II A class of Don Milani and II A and B of Pascoli and Barbara with I A of Don Milani and I A and
I B of Pascoli . Every lesson they would teach a song and a dance. Some songs were sung as a
“canone”: some children would start singing the first part of the song, then when they started
singing the second part, the other children would sing the first part in order to have a
juxtaposition of voices.
DANCE PROJECT
Teacher Cristina Fiorin
The dance is the final product of a previous activity that nursery school and primary school
children made together in January. The children met two times to invent a story. The first part of
the story was invented by the students of I A (Pascoli) with the children of nursery school S.
Antonio, while the I B of Pascoli continued the story with Nursery school Arcobaleno and the
final part was invented by the children of Don Milani and nursery school Girasole. The story is
about a wood where some bats, cats and witches lived. The witches were born without their nose,
so they had never smelt anything, and sometimes they turned invisible. The cats had lost their
tails and the bats (had lost) their wings. The people who lived in the wood were very sad about
that so they decided to dance to get the happiness again. While they were dancing, the cats had
their tails, the bat their wings and the witches their noses back. For the first time in their life the
witches smelt something. A good smell came from the pastry chef’s house... Bats, cats and witches
got to her house following the smell and, thanks to a magic trick, the cake became so big that
everyone could eat a slice of it. ...And they lived happily ever after...
In the performance the girls will be the witches and the boys will be the cats, the bats and the
trees.