Katie's Favorite Subject at School: Just Dance 4

Katie's second grade teacher is awesome.  When you ask Katie what her favorite thing about school is now, she'll instantly exclaim, "Just Dance 4!"

She's learned all the moves to the Just Dance 4 version of One Direction's hit song "What Makes You Beautiful."

The school doesn't own the game, but her resourceful teacher plays this video from YouTube during their morning "fitness break,"  and the kids follow along to the steps.  There are no pads to step on or controllers to hold to keep score of how well you're dancing.  It's just fun and great exercise.

Because of state regulations the students can no longer have two recesses per day.  Katie's grade's recess isn't scheduled until an hour before school gets out.  So I can imagine the kids are dying in the morning.  After all that math and reading and listening and not talking and sitting still, there must be some squirmy worms sitting in those little chairs, trying to learn but having trouble staying focused.

If I'm in a meeting at work that goes on for more than an hour I have to stand up and stretch my legs.  I get antsy if I'm forced to sit still longer than that.  I can't focus on what's going on in the meeting because the only thing I'm thinking is this chair hurts my ass--when do we get a break?

I'm thirty-five years older than Katie is, so things were quite different when I was a kid.  We never had music in class, unless it was specifically music class, but that was in a different room with a different teacher and those songs were not pop songs.  And we certainly weren't allowed to dance inside our classroom.  The closest thing we got to enjoying a fitness break inside our classroom while dancing to music was when we got to dosey doe around our partners in gym class as we begrudgingly learned how to square dance.

Dang, kids today.  They are so lucky.