A new website video resource created through a collaboration of UW–Madison and other movement experts aims to get kids dancing, moving, and having fun.
Movement Minutes (movementminutes.com) offers 15 free movement videos and follow-up activity prompts for educators, therapists, and caregivers of preschool and elementary-aged children, and beyond. The videos are high-quality, sensory friendly, and invite kids living in all kinds of bodies to engage in creative and accessible movement exploration.
Movement Minutes videos include both mindfulness practices and experiential movement intended to be used as brain breaks for children throughout their days. Four of the videos focus on breathing and mindfulness techniques, and 11 are short movement videos that emphasize motor skills, sensory integration, and creative exploration. Kids can practice “Lemon-Squeeze Breathing,” for instance (see below), or they can follow along with movement to music, or dance with scarves.
The videos were initially created and released individually during the summer of 2020 as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, this is the first time they have been made available together through an accessible platform.
“There’s a lot of research to support that movement is crucial for academic success, but our main goal has always been to support emotional regulation,” says Kate Corby, a UW–Madison professor in School of Education’s Dance Department, who worked for three years to create the videos and website with Board-Certified Dance/Movement Therapists Mariah LeFeber and Mary Patterson.
In addition, UW–Madison videographer Aaron Granat produced the videos, and Arielle Buslovich, a former rehabilitation psychology intern, worked on the project. Support from Dane Arts, UW–Madison’s Virginia Horne Henry Fund, and the Wisconsin Center for Education Products and Services was also integral to the creation of the videos and and their free dissemination through an open-access website.
“This is a resource designed for anybody to use, any parent, any caregiver, in a variety of contexts,” Corby says.
The website captures a decade of work by Corby, LeFeber, and Patterson on Performing Ourselves, a dance program based out of Madison that provided community youth with movement opportunities from 2011 to 2023. Throughout its tenure of face-to-face programming, Performing Ourselves served approximately 1,300 youth ages 4-14, trained and employed 40 undergraduate college students as teachers, and offered programming in nine community centers and seven elementary schools.
Corby notes she aspires for the videos to help continue the legacy of Performing Ourselves by making its class curriculum available statewide and beyond.
“Our hope is that this content supports a larger movement for dance education access across the state,” she says.
Learn more at movementminutes.com.