2nd Grade Movement – Skip to My Lou

Ciao, Panda Pal! Today we’ll be doing a movement activity called "Skip to My Lou."

Instructions: Explain to your child that in this activity, they will practice skipping while the music plays. Stand ~15-20 feet away from your child. When the music starts, they should skip to you. When they get to you, link arms and turn in a circle. Then, have your child skip back to where they started from. On the next round, you can skip to them instead, if you'd like, or you can just have them continue skipping back and forth to you.

When you're ready to begin, play this song: https://youtu.be/6dfuVLMwiMA (3:01)

Need some help doing this activity?

Tips:

If necessary, remind your child how to skip. Skipping is a combination of two ways of moving forward -- walking and hopping. To skip, you step and hop on one foot and then step and hop on the other. Here's a video of what skipping should look like: https://youtu.be/wfmOhx1VxcU (0:22)

Want more fun?

Was the activity too hard?

If your child is still working on mastering skipping, don't be too concerned. The timing of the movement is complicated, and many children don't really get it down until late second grade or beyond. Just have them practice and do the best they can.

If your child is getting frustrated, you can take things back a step and have them hop or gallop, instead. These are skills that children generally master in 1st grade.

Here's a video of what hopping should look like: https://youtu.be/N2MaM-glmz4 (0:09)

Here's a video of what galloping should look like: https://youtu.be/w2CeZeCABNU (0:14)

Was the activity too easy?

Use the settings on YouTube to play the song faster or slower and see if your child can time their skipping to the new tempo. This video provides a tutorial on how to change playback speed. https://youtu.be/KUymMkTpScw (2:00)

Learning Connections

In early elementary school, it's important for students to get plenty of exercise to build strong bodies and cardiovascular health. Students also need to develop the ability to perform a wide variety of locomotor movements. Locomotor movements are when your child moves their body through space to different locations. They include things like running, skipping, and galloping. This activity asks your child to practice a key locomotor movement they should master by the end of second grade--skipping.

Additional Resources

Articles for Grownups

This article describes each of the key locomotor skills elementary students need to learn and gives tips for teaching each skill: https://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/dont-just-exercise/
This video gives information about how to teach skipping to children, if your child hasn't yet learned this skill in their school PE classes: https://youtu.be/Ucvifij6ZHA (1:59)
Today’s Global Greeting is in Italian - “Ciao” means “Hello” in Italian. To learn more about this phrase, check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VHbFhXvmqM

Kid-Friendly Resources:

Here's a fun dance video to a more updated version of Skip to My Lou: https://youtu.be/ssac7sfUOgM (2:44)

Education Standards

Education standards are learning goals that identify what students should know and be able to do at particular grade levels (e.g. second grade) or milestone points in their education (e.g. by the end of high school). The Society for Health and Physical Educators (SHAPE) has created national standards for Physical Education, which define what children should be able to do at each stage of an effective physical education program. The standards lay out goals but do not provide specific curriculum for achieving those standards. How to achieve those goals is up to individual states, districts, schools, and teachers.

This activity addresses the following National Standards and Grade-Level Outcomes for K-12 Physical Education from SHAPE. The full standards can be seen here: https://www.shapeamerica.org/standards/pe/upload/Grade-Level-Outcomes-for-K-12-Physical-Education.pdf

Standard 1: Demonstrates competency in a variety of motor skills and movement patterns
- S1.E1.2 Skips using a mature pattern.

So How Was It?

Please share what you thought of this 2nd grade Movement activity called, “Skip to My Lou.”

At Dancing Panda, we want to make sure our families have the best possible experience. So, we’d love to know what you thought of this activity.

After doing the activity, please answer a few short questions.

Thank you!