What kinds of games did you play with your friends on the playground growing up? We didn’t have swings or slides, but we had four square, snowball fights in the winter, and makeshift soccer games in the summer.
For these South East Asian students in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), they dance! Their teacher, Mr. Myint has taught them a fun rhythm keeping exercise. Their school playground seems to be on the rooftop, so tree shade seems scarce and there’s probably not a lot of space for a full soccer field.
64 squares (8×6) are laid out in yellow tape on the lawn. Eight older girls (around age 15) are lined up by one corner of the massive square and wait for the music to start.
Once it begins, the girl at the head of the line jumps into the first square and starts dancing one square over at a time using the same footwork. Step hop, step hop, step hop. Once she reaches the other side she does the same step hop back towards the starting corner.
From here she does a little spin around and moves ahead to the second row of squares. At the same time, she is joined by the second girl in line, who is now doing the exact same dance in the first row.
Younger children at the school are lined up around the edges of the square, clapping along to the music and watching as the girls do the same repetitive and mesmerizing dances in sync.
One by one, a new girl joins the front row as the first girl moves further into the course. It’s now a team activity and the pressure is on to keep the foot work rolling!
More and more kids are coming out for their recess break and crowding around the girls game.
Once the first girl makes it to the end of the last row of squares, she’s free! She’s made it through without a single mistake and is now able to watch the rest of the girls along with her school mates.
She looks pretty relieved, it’s a lot of responsibility to be the first dancer!
As the dance grows nearer to its close lots of kids are getting impatient, and are probably pretty excited that the dance is being recorded! Lots of the younger students are running across the empty squares to get on camera.
But nothing is a distraction for the dancing girls! They must have practiced this routine a hundred times! Even though the footwork is simple, I think it would be easy to get stuck in your head, over think, and lose your footing. Not these girls!
And especially for the last dancer, who has all eyes on her, almost at the finish line, with a bigger audience then when they started. But she crushes it, of course!
Mr. Myint has come up with many fun playground games for the students at the school, and frequently shares them on YouTube.
Hopefully his fun routines will inspire more teachers to help their students get active during recess, no matter what the playground’s set up is!
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