Carnival Creatures — Dance the Elephant, the Swan and the Kangaroo

Play short movements from Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals and let the child become each creature — not by acting it out with noises, but by finding how that animal’s body moves to that music. The heavy elephant, the gliding swan and the springy kangaroo each ask for a completely different way of dancing.

  1. Choose three or four contrasting movements — The Elephant (slow and heavy), The Swan (smooth and long), Kangaroos (stop-start hopping), Aviary (tiny and fluttering), Royal March of the Lion (proud and strong). Each lasts only a minute or two.
  2. Before playing anything, talk about one animal — “How heavy is an elephant? What does it do with its trunk? How does it put its feet down?” Try it out together in silence.
  3. Play that animal’s music and dance it. Keep animal noises out of it — “let your body do the talking.”
  4. Move on to the next animal. Point out one contrast each time — “The swan never stops moving; the kangaroo keeps stopping. Can I see that?”
  5. Play one more movement without saying which animal it is. Ask the child to dance whatever creature they think the music sounds like, then tell you what it was and why.
  6. End with a “carnival parade” — play the Finale and let the child switch between their favourite creatures as they travel around the room.

Variation: use characters instead of animals — a giant, a fairy, a robot, a tired grandad, a puppet on strings — with any music that suits them. Or let the child invent a brand-new creature (part snake, part frog) and show you how it would dance.

Requirements

  • Space: Enough open floor to travel in a loop — a cleared living room, a hallway, or a garden
  • Surface: Non-slip floor or grass; a rug or carpet is kinder for creatures that crawl and slither
  • Materials: A recording of Carnival of the Animals (free on most streaming services) or any contrasting pieces of music; optional picture of each animal
  • Participants: 1 child plus an adult; lovely with siblings or a few friends as a parade
  • Supervision: Light to moderate — adult joins in, manages the music, and watches the floor-level movements

Rationale & Objective

Imitating animal and character movement is one of the listed examples for this subdomain, and it is the classic doorway into creative dance for young children (Stinson; Joyce) because the image hands the child a ready-made movement idea. The step that makes it dance rather than pretend play is attention to how the body moves — heavy or light, smooth or jerky, high or low, big or small — which is exactly what dance curricula mean by movement concepts (Teaching Strategies GOLD Objective 35; the US National Core Arts Standards ask kindergarteners to respond in movement to music, images and other stimuli). Saint-Saëns wrote each piece as a musical portrait, so the music itself models the quality. Howard Gardner’s account of bodily-kinesthetic intelligence describes this capacity to use the whole body to represent an idea, and Finland’s ECEC curriculum treats bodily expression as one of the languages through which children show what they think and imagine.

Progress Indicators

  • Early: shows each animal with a noise and one signature gesture (flapping, a trunk arm); moves at the same speed and weight for every creature
  • Developing: changes level and speed between animals — low and slow for the elephant, up and bouncy for the kangaroo; still relies on sound effects and adult suggestions
  • Proficient: whole-body quality clearly matches each creature and its music without noises; stops and starts with the kangaroo music; sustains one creature for the length of the piece
  • Advanced: dances an unnamed piece and explains the choice (“it’s tiny and fast, so it’s a mouse”); invents an original creature with its own way of moving; adds detail such as how the creature turns or rests

Safety Notes

  • Kangaroo jumping and lion pouncing need a clear floor and bent-knee landings — move coffee tables and check for small toys underfoot
  • Crawling and slithering creatures put weight on knees and wrists; use carpet or a mat, and keep it short on hard floors
  • With several children, make everyone travel in the same direction around the room during the parade to avoid head-on collisions
  • Heavy elephant stomping is satisfying but hard on heels and downstairs neighbours — suggest “heavy but quiet” bent-knee steps
  • A child who is frightened by a particular piece (the lion’s roar in the piano, for instance) should be free to sit out and watch

Hints

  • Playfulness: be an animal too, and be bad at it on purpose — a kangaroo who is far too tired to hop, a swan who keeps tripping. Being corrected by a five-year-old is half the game
  • Sustain interest: add one new movement of the suite each time (Tortoises, Aquarium, Fossils, Hens and Roosters), or switch to another animal-rich piece such as Peter and the Wolf
  • Common mistake: letting it turn into a noisy chase. If roaring takes over, bring in the rule “dancers are silent — the music is the animal’s voice” and slow things down with the swan
  • Limited space: dance the creatures with hands and arms only at a table (a swan neck, elephant-trunk arm, kangaroo fingers), or dance on the spot — an elephant swaying, a bird fluttering without travelling
  • Cross-domain: look the real animal up in a book or a short video and notice how it truly moves (science); retell which creature came first, next and last (sequencing and memory)
  • Progression: two very different animals with the names given → four animals → guess the unnamed animal from the music → invent a creature and choose music for it → a short parade with a set order of creatures

Sources

  • Teaching Strategies GOLD Objective 35 (explores dance and movement concepts)
  • US National Core Arts Standards — Dance, Kindergarten (Creating: respond in movement to a variety of stimuli such as music, images and observed dance)
  • Stinson, S. — Dance for Young Children: Finding the Magic in Movement (imagery as a starting point for young children’s dance)
  • Joyce, M. — First Steps in Teaching Creative Dance to Children
  • Gardner, H. (1983) — Frames of Mind (bodily-kinesthetic and musical intelligences)
  • Finland National Core Curriculum for ECEC — “Diverse forms of expression” (bodily expression)
  • UK EYFS — Expressive Arts and Design ELG