05/29/2026
Hi, I'm Rebecca, and this is the story of how a group of pre-Kindergarten kids changed my mind about movement making art.
I used to live in a different city, and in that city for about a year I ran the 2 year old to 5 year old "mommy and me" class in a church basement. I. Loved. It. We would sit in a circle,and everyone had INPUT. We'd sing the hits. London Bridge, Going on a Bear Hunt, The Rattling Bog. The alphabet. (The kids thought it was a joke when we got to the last letter of the alphabet and I would say Zed instead of Zee. Fully. We never got back on track. I never heard the end of it).
We'd always read a story, and it could be something I picked up from the library, a book a kid had brought, or something from the church basement. We'd read the hits. Swimmy. The Snowy Day. Counting on Community. The Last Stop on Market Street. We'd learn about jobs. We'd learn about the impact that we can have on each other. We'd talk about the ways that other people impact us.
And then we would create. We made our own fish to swim in a school like Swimmy. We traced our hands, and made every finger a different person in our community. We walked to the bus stop and talked about the people we saw along the way. We moved our bodies. We made art. We laughed, dreamed and sat with each other when it was hard.
This is some of the most rewarding work I've ever done, and I am so thankful that a Lutheran Church in Chicago gave me my first opportunity to see how movement and art can work in tandem.
