Armadillo Dance

Betcha didn't know armadillos could dance, did you? They are shy creatures and tend to dance when no one is watching, or if they hear a catchy tune and just can't help it. "Armadillo Dance" is a fun South American flavored tune for your students. There are lots of opportunities to get your whole class involved. The mallet percussion part has only two notes at a time throughout and could be easily played by one student or more if you prefer. The optional Boomwhacker® part fills out the chords more. It does include a G#, which you can leave out if you don't have a chromatic BW set. That still leaves a lot of notes to get your kids involved. The piece also includes various percussion such as shakers, guiro, and even dried seed pods. These enter at measure 9 on the recording. You could have some students join in on percussion playing the rhythms we used (shown here) or using their own. They could also have fun making their own percussion instruments.

If you want to further bring armadillos across the curriculum, share these fun facts with your students:

• The name is Spanish for "little armored one."
• There are twenty different species of armadillo.
• They originate from South America and are cousins of sloths and anteaters.
• Only the Three-banded armadillo of South America can roll fully into a ball for protection.
• They are very good swimmers and excellent diggers. They often dig to escape danger.
• The Nine-banded armadillo is common to the U.S. and has been found as far north as Illinois and Indiana.
• Some species such as the Giant armadillo are endangered due to habitat loss and hunting.
• Nine-banded armadillos are the only mammals known to almost always give birth to identical quadruplets. They sometimes have three or five pups, but they are still identical.

(These and more armadillo facts can be found at https://www.msu.edu/~nixonjos/armadillo/)