Teaching Children to dance on St Andrews Day !

 Happy St Andrews Day, folks !

St Andrew was crucified on a cross of this shape, and he became the Patron Saint of Scotland when the Greek missionary St Regulus landed in 345 A.D. on the East Coast of Fife with St Andrew's bones  in a bag. A whole series of miracles: firstly, that the Emperor Constatine decided to send a missionary to Alba. It was a miracle that St Andrews's bones were available; and that the Holy Roman Empire wanted to send them to Northern Europe. A miracle that St Regulus (also called St Rule) reached Scotland. A miracle that he decided (and was able) to sail past Arran, Mull, Skye and Orkney to reach Fife .... so many unlikely miracles that the city of St Andrews (where he landed) deserves its worldwide fame.  

If you can spin this yarn, the story should motivate children to listen .... and maybe to dance!  Kids live a bit of gore and torture. so offer them this Spanish Inquisition version of St Andrew's martyrdom. 

At the RSCDS Autumn Gathering on Nov 5th, there was a meeting of the Youth Committee which provided some helpful insights on teaching young people:  children will find it tough to attend a weekly class because they have so many other things going on. Young people will enjoy a day-school; a dance camp; a Ceilidh.with a bonfire ...  And they should also enjoy dancing with their families. That is how I learned dancing: dancing with my parents because dancing is a part of our Scottish culture.

In France, I link dance to English teaching. I visit school classrooms to tell them about Scotland and kilts and dancing. I use two songs with vocabulary useful for 9-year-olds: You canna shove yer Granny off the Bus and Ten Green Bottles Hanging on a Wall ....  taught with illustrations drawn on sheets of paper.  Other verses: You can shove you silly sister off the train. You can push your boring brother off his bike. You can throw your ugly uncle from a plane. All good vocabulary, with laughter.

The kids enjoy the songs and they love dancing! I start by dancing a circle using slip-step. We get the feel of reel-time music by clapping. Then we dance The Cumberland Reel. with pas chassé = the traveling step in reel time .... but I spend very little time on footwork. We must focus on The Joy Of Dance and Music.  To reinforce this, I move on to The Virginia Reel and Thread The Needle. Everyone enjoys those dances. 

Try it yourselves.

Dancing keeps you warm: and other ways to save energy this Winter.

Dancing keeps you warm.

This WINTER I shall focus on keeping my BODY warm, not the whole house.

When I dance, I am warm!

Then I wrap up warmly to protect my body heat and my dancing muscles.

When I was a child, Winter mornings formed ice on the inside of my bedroom windows. The bedroom was freezing. Parts of my childhood were focused on keeping myself warm. Woollen scarves, gloves, boots and duffel coats were vital. The lesson I offer for this Winter when heating bills are rising, is to focus on keeping your body warm. A warm house is a luxury. A warm body is a necessity.

I wear warm slippers indoors, with warm socks (mine are long woollen stockings worn over short socks to protect the wool). My several layers of clothing include a woollen sweater. I also need a scarf to protect my neck, even indoors. But the first priority for a dancer is keeping the leg muscles warm with woollen stockings.

 

The sun is setting as I write this, and I have just filled a hot water bottle for my wife. I have brought down our dressing gowns (towelling bathrobes) to keep in the warmth from our necks down to our calves. We are seated beside a fire, drinking hot tea and eating cookies: carbohydrate fuel to warm the body, a hot water bottle to warm the chest, and a towelling robe to keep the heat in. 

 

We are not yet heating the house. From June until mid-November the temperatures have been mild. Yesterday we had sunshine; today is a true November rainy day and it will soon be  time to implement Winter Measures to keep warm. To keep our bodies warm. 

My British childhood in the 1950s was chilly. We had the privilege of owning our own house after the war, with half an acre of garden. A detached house in a wintry garden means that the corner bedroom has at least two (in my case it was three) outside walls. A previous owner had added a room downstairs, big enough for his Freemason buddies to play snooker on two full-sized billiard tables, and my bedroom overlooked the huge flat roof of that snooker room. 

From the age of seven, I helped my father clear the snow off that roof with shovels: melted snow = water = heavy weight and the risk of a collapsed ceiling in the sitting room below. We had to sweep the roof of snow (and occasionally of rain water) to protect that flat roof. From the age of twelve I swept and shovelled that huge sitting-room roof alone, while my father was working overseas. I hated snow!

 The large room was a sitting room only in Summer: a happy space in sunshine, with glass French windows leading directly into the garden. But this one-time snooker room had long three walls whipped by the Winter winds. It was so cold, it was closed for six months of the year. During Winter, our family ate and sat and lived around the kitchen table, next to the hot-water boiler. That boiler consumed a coal product known as anthracite, that I had to carry in from a bunker beside the house. Every night, I would “stoke the boiler” with anthracite, rake the ashes, and pray that the boiler’s embers would still be burning at breakfast time. 

The boiler gave us hot water for evening baths (so the bathroom became steamy and cosy for a hour) but only the kitchen was heated. Bedrooms were cold. For sleep we huddled under blankets with hot water bottles. I had two bottles: a “stone” (actually ceramic) bottle to warm the end of the bed, wrapped in a towel to avoid scalding my feet; and a rubber hot water bottle hugging my chest. 

Another way to stay warm in Winter is to cuddle up with one of these gorgeous models.  I am - of course - looking at the warm woollen sweaters, and not at the ladies who are wearing them.  If only .....

 FOCUS ON YOUR BODY HEAT rather than the whole house

 Modern heating with a fuel or gas boiler certainly provides a comfortable environment, but my childhood reminds me that central heating is a modern luxury that we do not NEED. We live too well, we pollute too much, we spend too extravagantly. I try to stop my wife leaving windows open in mid-Winter, uselessly warming the street outside. We can economize heat and money if we focus on keeping our bodies warm instead of heating the whole house.

Wear Scottish woollens (knitted scarves, sweaters, stockings), use hot water bottles, and stay warm !