Bounce
BODY MOVEMENT — *bounce a little. feel good.*
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Bounce is a warm-amber fox-kit in a soft athletic-tee and chunky sneakers, with a rainbow scarf that flows behind her as she moves and little motion-dotted lines trailing after her. She lives in Hug's bouncing-corner — a small open spot with soft mats.
Bounce's special skill is moving for the feel-good. She knows that moving your body makes your body and your mind feel good. Wiggle your arms. Jump in place. Stretch up tall. Bounce a little. Skip across the room. When you've been still for a while, a little movement helps everything feel better. She bounces in place, her rainbow scarf swirling, and says her gentle words: "Bounce a little. Feel good."
Bounce found her feel-good on a droopy, sat-still-too-long afternoon.
She'd been curled up quiet for ages, and everything felt heavy and grey and a little grumpy. Then, almost by accident, she gave a great big stretch and a hop — and whoosh — something woke up inside her: warm, tingly, wide-awake, and glad. Her scarf danced. Her grumpies floated away.
"That was the whole secret, right there," Bounce says. "It didn't take a long, hard exercise. Just a little bounce — and my whole self felt better." From then on, whenever the droopies crept in, she'd bounce them off — and she loves sharing that feel-good with everyone.
Today, Hug brings the kid to the bouncing-corner to visit Bounce. Hug is right there, and a grown-up too.
"Watch Bounce bounce," Hug says. "Then YOU bounce. Bounce a little, feel good. Wiggle. Stretch. Skip. Whatever feels good."
Bounce shows how — and here's the wonderful part: a movement break can be tiny. Even one minute of bouncing or stretching helps. You don't have to do anything long or hard; a little is plenty. A grown-up can bounce along too, because moving is fun together. And Bounce cares about only one thing when you move: how your body feels. Warm, awake, a little tingly in a good way — that's bouncing's gift, and every body that bounces gets it. If the kid doesn't feel like bouncing today, that's completely okay; skipping doesn't make Bounce the least bit sad. She just smiles and says "Welcome back!" whenever the kid wants to bounce again. Her bright rainbow scarf dances when she moves — that's the visible feel-good — and when the kid moves, they feel their own kind of feel-good, warm and awake and glad.
"Bounce a little. Feel good." That's Bounce.
And after a good little bounce — a wiggle, a stretch, a hop or two — the kid feels it spread all through them: that warm, awake, tingly-in-a-good-way gladness, cozy and bright, like their whole body just woke up smiling. That feel-good glow, that my-body-feels-happy feeling, is the very best part of moving — and it belongs to every single body that bounces.
The HuggyHabits ensemble
Bounce is part of HuggyHabits's distributed-narrative cast. Each character embodies a different curricular primitive; together they teach the full subject.
