Book to Boogie: “Up, Down, and Around”

Book to Boogie is a monthly series that pairs picture books with dance and movement activities for preschool story time. The series is curated by Kerry Aradhya of Picture Books & Pirouettes and written by a different guest writer each month. We hope that children’s librarians, as well as classroom teachers and dance educators, will find these activities useful and fun!

by Jill Homan Randall

Children naturally gravitate to opposites, including word pairs such as high/low, up/down, yes/no, and fast/slow. Prepositions and the relationships they describe — such as how people can relate in space to other people, to objects, and to the room they are in — are other important concepts to explore with kids.

Up, Down, and Around by Katherine Ayres, with illustrations by Nadine Bernard Westcott, is a perfect picture book to read this spring. Taking inspiration from the natural world and from plants growing up, down, and all around, you can use the book to dance high, low, and all around the room during story time!

Read, then Dance

You can begin story time by playing the classic movement game Simon Says, which allows participants to move in a variety of ways: high, low, fast, slow, in place, around the room, reaching, bending, twisting, and turning. Make a list of words to have on hand as you lead the activity. Explore contrasting ideas and word pairs.

Next, invite the group to sit down while you read the book Up, Down, and Around once through to everyone. While they remain seated, you can encourage them to move their arms and hands as you read. For each part of the book with the word “up,” the group can stretch their arms above them. For each part with the word “down,” they can reach low. With “around and around,” encourage them to stay seated but move in twisting and reaching ways that explore the space in front of their bodies, next to them, and behind them.

Once you have read the book in its entirety, explain how the group will then dance to the story. Get participants back up on their feet. Take a minute to improvise and practice movement that stretches and reaches upwards and high; then explore movement that sinks and descends down to the ground. Play with how to travel through space by weaving and reaching — near, beside, between, and around the other children and adults in the room. Invite eye contact, smiles, and hellos from the people in the room.

The dance will now begin! Ask the group to spread out and be seated (“starting position”). As you read through the book once more, the group will improvise moving up, down, and around. A good music selection could be “Awake” by Tycho (electronic music) or “Such Great Heights” by The Section Quartet (a string quartet cover of the Iron & Wine song, but without lyrics). Both songs have a weaving and twisting feel.

Afterwards, you can ask the group to show their favorite parts of the story. Have each family (e.g., mother and son) work together to remember their favorite part. If the whole group is feeling brave, encourage each family to share their favorite part (e.g., “broccoli grows up”).

Up, Up, Up!

Numerous picture books explore the concept of “up” and “up and down.” Read a few more selections to your group, including:

• Up! by Kristine O’Connell George with illustrations by Hiroe Nakata


• Great Day for Up by Dr. Seuss with illustrations by Quentin Blake


• Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt by Kate Messner with illustrations by Christopher Silas Neal

At the end of story time, you can take your favorite concepts from these books and make your own “Up Dance” or “Up and Down Dance” with different ways to move (e.g., hands up, feet up, swing up, look up, melt down). Write your ideas on a big piece of chart paper to easily and quickly remember the parts of the dance.

Jill Homan Randall is passionate about the intersection of language and movement. She teaches dance at The Hamlin School in San Francisco and has been a teaching artist for over 17 years. Jill maintains the blog Dancing Words , about children’s books on dance and books that inspire dancing. Her article “What Makes a Good Book about Dance?” was published in the January/February 2013 issue of The Horn Book Magazine. Jill also has a chapter on the intersection of language and movement in preschool and kindergarten dance classes in the book Moving Ideas: Multimodality and Embodied Learning in Communities and Schools. Jill’s latest publication is Dance Education Essentials: 55 Objects and Ideas for New Preschool-12th Grade Teaching Artists.

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