All Cool, All Request Kiddie Dance Party
When I moved from working evenings at WCCB to co-hosting our morning show nearly four years ago, there was one thing I wasn’t looking forward to. Going to bed while the sun was still up and getting up at 2am? Not bad. Doing 4 hours of live TV with little or no chance for a bathroom break? Easy. Dancing on TV every Friday? That was a problem.
WCCB is one of a small number of stations that celebrate the weekend with a weekly dance segment. At WCCB News Rising we call it “The Friday Dance Party” and it happens every Friday at around 8:25. This segment made me realize I’m even worse at dancing then I thought and that I do this white guy under bite thing when I dance (thanks to some viewers).
Well, my boys eventually caught the dance party on TV or Facebook and decided we needed to have dance parties at home. I’m ok with dancing like a fool when there aren’t tens of thousands of people watching all over North and South Carolina.
Typically, our dance party is either before or after dinner. It does a pretty good job of tuckering the boys out and getting rid of some of that super strong toddler energy. I find we also often need a dance party break when we’ve been stuck inside due to bad weather. I let Tyler & Chase pick some of their favorite songs and built them a playlist in iTunes. Being a former radio station program director and music director (and obsessive compulsive) I took those songs to make a 10 song playlist where one song flows almost flawlessly into the other. I changed my iTunes settings to allow a 7 second fade in between songs, which works pretty well. You can also go in and edit song length to make the fades crisper but I hope you aren’t as crazy as I am and would ever do that.
Here’s our current playlist:
“Happy (from “Despicable Me 2″)” Pharrell Williams
“Axel F” Crazy Frog
“Moves Like Jagger” Maroon 5
“That’s What I Like” Kelsi Luck
“Hello” Martin Solveig & Dragonette
“Surfin’ Bird” The Trashmen
“Banana Phone” (Fast Version) Raffi
“Video Killed The Radio Star” The Buggles
“We No Speak Americano” Yolanda Be Cool & Dcup
“Party Rock Anthem” LMFAO
Our at home dance parties are typically 3-5 songs at most. The kids also love when I record video of their dancing and play it back for them. They love watching themselves dance on the computer or TV. They clearly didn’t learn that from me.
