Welcome & Share Time:

  • Welcome your students to the class

  • Call each student’s name and allow them to share one thing with the class. If they need help or are shy, ask questions.

  • When needed, remind dancers of the basic rules of the classroom.

  • The welcome and share time gives you an opportunity to re-establish a positive rapport with your dancers, check-in on their lives since the last class, and allow latecomers to filter in before dancing starts.

  • Share time grows confidence, helping students to be brave enough to speak in front of the class.

  • It also helps you get some of the talking out of the way before dancing starts.

  • It allows extra time for some dancers to decompress after separating from their parents/caregivers.

Warm-Up:

  • Warm-Up helps to center your dancers, re-enforce good movement literacy practices, and increase strength, flexibility, and coordination. You do not necessarily have to do every warm-up activity each week.

  • Gross Motor: Warm-up typically starts with gross motor skills. Marching, jumping, hopping, swaying, standing on one foot, swinging arms and legs, reaching, crawling, planking, etc.

  • We start with gross motor skills, because it helps “get the wiggles out” so dancers can focus during the next phases of the class. The more athletic this phase of warm-up is, the better

  • Fine Motor & Confidence Building: During this part of warm-up, we do a lot of work with our hands. Clapping patterns, patting different parts of the body, working on same and opposite concepts, touching specific fingers together, etc. While this happens, dancers move one at a time, doing a gross motor skill around the circle to grow the dancer’s confidence.

  • Fine motor work helps students to increase neurological connections like hand/eye coordination, spatial understanding, and problem solving. Cross body movement helps the two sides of the brain learn to work together.

  • Dancing one at a time without the pressure of the whole class turning to attend to the movement helps dancers gain confidence in the classroom setting and will help them later in a school classroom.

  • Dancing around the circle is also an opportunity to bring in additional skills like levels, directions, etc.

  • Flexibility & Core Strength Part One: During this exercise, we focus on different areas of the body to increase flexibility and build core strength. Reaching for the toes to lengthen hamstrings, flexing and stretching the feet to activate calves and feet while increasing lower leg flexibility, opening the legs to straddle for inner leg, hamstring, and side body flexibility. We include elements of rolling down to the floor and pulling back up to increase core strength. Balancing on the tail also serves to activate and strengthen the core.

  • Flexibility and core strength are essential for healthy movement patterns and building this in the preschool class will serve your dancers well both in the studio and out.

  • Flexibility & Core Strength Part Two: As we continue this exercise, we focus on core and back strengthening as well as quadricep, back, and hip extensor flexibility. Swimming with only the belly on the floor helps to activate back muscles while reinforcing core strength. From this position, it is easy to pull the feet in towards the dancer’s tail to stretch the quadriceps, push up to upward dog/scorpion to open the front of the hip and extend the back. In addition to the traditional swimming, you can add rolling with no hands into this exercise to further engage the brain and strengthen the core.

  • The reasoning here is much the same. Core and back strength is essential to healthy movement and swimming is a great way to both strengthen the core and gain flexibility.

  • Isolations: Through this exercise, dancers learn to move one part of their body at a time. Moving the head side-to-side, up-and-down, shrugging shoulders together or individually, tipping the head, rocking the body, tipping the torso without moving the tail, rotating the torso, rounding and straightening the spine, etc.

  • Learning to move one part of the body while keeping the rest still is a crucial skill for dance and this is a first start in that understanding. Isolation involves motor planning and using different regions of the brain. It is complex and you will see extreme growth in these skill between the beginning and end of the 3 year old class.

  • Quadruped Core and Coordination: In this exercise, we practice movement like cat/cow (happy cat/angry cat), oppositional reaching, tabletop position, and balance.

  • Being in a quadruped position is excellent for young children. It encourages core strength, helps coordinate between the two sides of the body, allows for work with oppositions, provides proprioceptive awareness between the body touching the floor and being able to reach for the foot without seeing it.

  • Transition: The transition between warm-up and center barre provides focus for the next section of the class. Here we take deep belly breaths, promote hamstring flexibility, and take the time to move our bodies freely before coming back to focus.

  • Taking full belly breaths helps to recenter the focus and calm the nervous system. We move about the room freely to engage the gross motor skill and release the pressure of staying focused through the warm-up.

Center Barre:

  • Teach young dancers elements of the ballet barre but make these developmentally appropriate and engaging.

  • 3/4 Year Olds will perform this work in a circle for at least the first half of the year before proceeding to a line or zigzag facing the mirror. 5 Year Olds can transition to facing the mirror straight away from the beginning of the term.

  • Center Barre work continues to engage gross motor and fine motor skills, helps in increase strength and flexibility, and focuses balance - both on one leg and in élevé or relevé.

  • Center Barre also builds an understanding of the body and how the joints work. Dancers learn to understand bent versus straight, stretched versus relaxed, sharp versus smooth.

  • Plié and Port de bras: Through this exercise, dancers learn to bend and straighten, to line the knees up over the toes, and to move legs and arms in coordination. It can also incorporate the challenge of bending both knees while moving only one arm at a time. Port de bras teaches the positions of the arms while also encouraging a soft and flowy movement style.

  • Tendu: This exercise focuses on learning to straighten the legs and stretch the feet. Three year olds succeed in finding a straight leg but they typically move through a bent leg to reach the lengthened position. Four year olds can start to understand moving with a straight knee but this is still quite difficult for them. Five year olds can master this type of movement with practice. Note: You can continue to emphasize the straight knee in your examples, but it isn’t necessary to correct this explicitly until the five year old year. Tendu is also a great opportunity to work on patterning and add in clapping that reinforces different areas of learning (levels, body parts, directions, etc.)

  • Dégagé: 3/4 year old students may not need this exercise at the start of the term. They are adjusting to class and need to prioritize keeping this section of the class shorter. Once they have mastered the class structure and class begins to run smoothly, it’s time to add in this exercise. Dégagé reinforces everything learned through tendu, but it add a focus on balance and stability.

  • Battement Piqué: This exercise continues to reinforce all aspects mentioned in tendu, but it also forces the dancer to balance on one foot for a longer duration, highlights patterning, and teaches dancers to move the leg from the hip rather than from the knee. Much like tendu the competence will not really solidify consistently until the five year old year.

  • Rond de jambe: 3/4 year old students will start this exercise toward the middle of the academic year and 5 year olds often start during the second or third month of the term. This exercise continues to move the student toward balancing on one foot while also working on exploring movement through second and towards the back. 3 and 4 year olds will only open the leg to second while 5 year olds can begin to add the derrière position toward the second half of the year. Working on Rond de jambe also reinforces the sliding of the foot along the floor.

  • Passé/Retiré: 3/4 year old students will keep a parallel passé/retirée position but 5 year olds can experiment with moving in out and of turnout. The initiation of this exercise is purely for balance and coordination. As dancers’ balance improves, you begin to target sliding up the side of the leg, making sure the lifted position is next to the opposite knee, and adding more complex arms and crossbody connections.

  • Temps lié: Learning to shift weight from one foot to the other takes practice. Beginning with side-to-side movement and eventually working towards forward and backward movement is essential because stretching the back foot is a difficult skill for this age group. Students will begin by shifting partially (not fulling stretching the non-weight-bearing foot) but will eventually work towards a more complete weight transfer. Using babies or ribbons brings motivation for the movement and adding patterns over time helps keep little ones engaged.

  • Sauté/Échappé: Sauté can be described like a rocket taking off - bending the knees for fuel, blasting off, and landing softly back on earth. Moving from parallel towards turnout, dancers will start with a plié, sauté, plié pattern to encourage good body mechanics in jumping as they move forward. Over time, a mix of slow and careful jumping with faster jumps helps to regularize the pattern and carry it through into a more realistic tempo. 4 year olds can begin to work on landing in specific positions like first and second but this skill is more impactful and better understood in the 5 year old year. Sauté is also a great exercise to practice patterning and direction changes, since jumps all dancers to easily turn their bodies.

  • Transition: To keep little dancers engaged, have them move to one side of the floor to create lines by calling on pretend play. Gallop like horses, glide like ice skaters, or roll like worms. It’s more fun and provides teacher time to take a drink, count students, lay down spots for lines, etc. It also provides a gross motor movement to release the tension built from keeping bodies in one spot during the center barre.

Traveling:

  • Traveling movement feels like the payoff moment for dancers. It gives them an opportunity to explore movement and expend energy resources. As a teacher this portion of the class is a chance to look at children more individually and to challenge them with specific movement dynamics that are difficult to correct as the whole group is moving simultaneously. It’s also the moment for movement that requires lots of repetition to achieve mastery.

  • Gallops allow us to explore traveling in different pathways, exploring the energy it takes to leave the ground, and patterning.

    - sideways - Lateral movement is the most difficult for humans of all ages. Traveling sideways is the least natural. While you don’t need to do this first, you do need to do it early in the dance experience, because while it is challenging, it creates strong coordination and the building of neural pathways.

    - forward - Forward is the most natural gallop, but dancers will try to use the dominant foot regardless of direction. Make sure they switch feet for the second side.

    - 2 on each foot - The 2 gallops and switch pattern is difficult for dancers but helps even out single-sided dominance.

    - 2 on each foot x 2, échappé x 2 - Teaches forward movement versus stationary movement.

    - same but 2nd échappé jumps to face the back then the front - Same as above but adds directionality.

    - backwards - While backward gallops are awkward, they are neurologically challenging and really help young dancers make neural connections because they can’t look down to see which leg is in front.

    - zigzag gallops - This engages lateral movement through sideways gallops and spatial awareness by aiming toward specific locations. (This also helps prepare dancers for future zigzag patterns.)

    - zigzag gallops with a circle - Same as above but adding directionality as dancers circle around the spots.

    - partner gallops basic sideways holding 2 hands - Working with a partner helps dancers learn to make eye contact and adjust the speed/size of their movement to accommodate their partner.

    - same but with sideways circle at center stage - Moving away from a partner and finding them again works on spatial awareness and making connections, in addition to pathways.

    - partner gallops forward holding one hand - Encourage dancers to change their focus by looking towards their partner, straight ahead, or away from their partner.

    - partner gallops forward holding one hand and letting go to circle around your own spot at center stage, grab hands again and finish - Same as above.

    - two forward with inside foot, two sideways grabbing both hands, two backwards with the outside foot, turn out to face your front grab hands again - This pattern is quite difficult but excellent for 5 year olds and even 6 year olds.

    - work on a real polka (gallop and skip and gallop and skip) - The polka step is difficult and requires a balanced skill set on both sides. It is a good test of a dancer’s progression at the end of the five year old year but mastery is not required at this age.

  • Skips incorporate gross motor skips with single-sided balance and strength. Skips are a day one activity in my 3/4 year old classes because they allow me to assess the dancers level and strength.

    - forward skip - The first phase of skipping goes slow showing a balance and attempting to hop. Note: Personally, I never insist on mastery in the early phase of skipping. Instead, I find it most effective to slow dancers down. Holding a dancers hand to slow them down has been the most effective in helping them to skip. Dancers will begin to move faster as they gain confidence.

    - backward skip - After several classes of forward skips, begin backward skips even if dancers haven’t mastered going forward. Sometimes skipping backwards helps them to go slow and actually improves their forward skips.

    - skips in a pattern (4 forward, 4 backing up, 4 forward, 4 in a circle) - Adding patterning and directionality is tricky for young dancers but it helps keep them engaged in a learned skill. Start patterning when the majority of your class is skipping.

    - skip for height - This builds single-sided strength.

    - figure 8 skips - Sending dancers across the floor in groups of three. At each station of spots, two are red and one is green. The red dancers stop while the green dancer travels in a figure 8 around their classmates. This is challenging but introduces the figure 8 and also helps students with spatial awareness and remaining still while a partner dances.

    - skips that turn - You can introduce this at the end of the 5 year old class if dancers are excelling. It introduces the feeling of turning while maintaining a movement.

    - skips turn into temps levé en arabesque - Introducing temps levé en arabesque as “skip’s cousin” helps dancers take a preschool skill and convert it to a ballet skill. Dancers can naturally do this movement when introduced as a skip with the lifted leg in a different position.

  • Bourrées increase strength, habituate dancers to time on demi-pointe, and when arms are added, encourage movement of two different qualities and tempos simultaneously

    - basic tip toes - We often pretend we are carrying a baby to bed. Walking on demi-pointe helps dancers begin to understand straight knees and get used being on demi-pointe.

    - work on making the feet move quickly - Same as above while encouraging students to focus on tempo.

    - quick feet and slow up and down wings - Pretend play - Fairies learning how to fly - have to tip toe very quickly and flap their wings to strengthen them. The opposition of fast and slow, smooth and staccato, is extremely difficult for little dancers but challenges their brains to incorporate both types of movement simultaneously.

    - add patterns (3 counts of bourrées, plié 4, bourrée turn in your spot 5, 6, 7, plié 8) - Patterning keeps students engaged with a learned skill.

    - pas de bourrée couru - brush one leg in front (helps dancers to learn to hold their weight over the back/supporting foot, followed by quick bourrée steps traveling forward) - Learning to hold the body back over the standing leg is challenging but will transfer pas de couru, brush waltz. and developpé/adagio/etc.

  • Waltz - Learn patterning, work on levels, and focus on the difference between bent and straight.

    - tip toe towards a spot and squish it with one foot - it’s important to start with physical spots to squish

    - same but encourage alternating feet as you squish - continue using physical spots and begin to work on evening out the use of the two sides of the body.

    - squish, two tip toes - Using the two sides of the body equally and working on patterning.

    - adding simple arms (demi second when you squish, rising to allongé when you tip toe - this matches the feet so it’s intuitive) - it’s important to begin incorporating the whole body rather than just the legs.

    - adding arm variations (arms to the right when you squish the right foot and left when you squish the left) - Working on isolating the two sides of the body

    - adding a simple turn (taking two steps to turn toward the foot that you squish with. Example: down, up, up, down turn around, down up up, down turn around) - This is quite tricky for dancers but introduces turning with steps instead of spinning.

    - moving towards turning on each - increasing the difficulty by turning more often

    - instead of a squish do a chassé (slide) toward the corner and two tip toes - this dynamic switch encourages new ways to explore the same movement

    - add arms to chassé waltz

    - add turn to chassé waltz

    - brush waltz (ages 6+)

    - brush waltz turning (ages 7/8+)

    - brush waltz with small developpé (ages 8+)

    - adding turn

  • Retirée/Passé Walks

    - step retirée, step retirée (emphasize the hold in retirée so it isn’t marching)

    - backwards

    - step retirée touch the knee with opposite hand 3x, repeat

    - backwards with the touch

    - step retirée but on the third one step retirée, developpé the lifted leg devant, back retirée

    and then keep going

    - step retirée with the opposite arm in 3rd

    - adding the developpé with the arms

    - step retirée, step retirée, step retirée/developpé/pas de bourrée couru

  • Marching - Marching skill are important for working on crossbody movement, because letting the arms swing creates a natural crossbody flow, which helps develop connections between the two sides of the brain. You can also tie in patterning and pathways.

    - forward for high knees and loud feet

    - backwards

    - forward circling around a mat at the half way point

    - forward circling at 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4

    - same but make the halfway mat a different color so that it goes circle right, circle left, circle right

    - marching in patterns

  • Grapevine Step - The grapevine step allows us to continue to focus on lateral movement. It forces the dancer to alternate feet and shift the weight developing stronger coordination and building strength on the weaker side.

    - step side cross in front the whole way across the floor

    - step side cross in front, step side cross in back

    - adding a little plié as the foot crosses front or back

    - grapevine facing a partner

    - in patterns: 8 counts grapevine (sd, frt, sd, bk, sd, frt, sd, bk, 8 skips in a circle - then same pattern facing partner and dancers go around each other and back to their spots - then same pattern but dancers switch spots)

    - adding a circle at center stage

    - changing directions: sd, frt, sd, bk, sd, frt, jump and face the back to repeat (note this is trickier than any of the other partner work because dancers have to change feet - the crossing foot is now the sideways foot)

  • Pas de chat - Parallel pas de chat sets dancers up for a turned out pas de chat in ballet when they are older. It also helps coordinate the order of the take off and landing feet. In addition, it helps to grow the awareness of landing one foot then the other (versus both feet together) and it allows for focus on the quality of a soft landing.

    - put spots/pumpkins on the floor with big spaces in between, sneak towards the first spot and go up and over in parallel pas de chat (up, up, down, down with the feet) - make sure they are landing with their feet close together

    - bring spots closer together as they improve

    * we are cats sneaking through the farmer’s garden and he doesn’t like cats in his garden. We have to land with our feet very close together so we don’t leave too many foot prints. Have an assistant be the farmer and when they put their hand up to their eyes it is the farmer looking out the window and the cats have to freeze

    - do this with 4 spots/ pumpkins in front of each dancer and have them do 4 pas de chats, freeze, and tip toe back to the beginning (beside not on top the spots)

    - repeat but tip toe backwards to your spots

    - repeat but tip toe backwards weaving through the spots

  • Assemblé - Similar to pas de chat, you are working on a specific take off and descent. Dancers have to coordinate swinging the second leg from back to from and landing with two feet simultaneously. When learned in close succession with pas de chat, assemblé and pas de chat can then be paired to create a dynamic challenge between a bent leg take off and a straight leg take off, landing one foot then the other or both feet together, etc. The combination of the two is quite tricky for little brains but beneficial for development.

    - tip toe towards a spot on the floor, jump and land with both feet on the spot

    - basic forward traveling (step forward on the right, swing the left from the back to front, land together - jumping down the rabbit hole - have to have the feet close or you won’t fit)

    - alternating feet

    - from 1st position, landing in 1st position

  • Parallel Sissonne - A third jump to learn and add to the jumping group, sissonne pushes dancers to jump off of two feet at the same time, land on one, and still make traveling progress. Typically, this is a late 4 year old or early 5 year old skill, and can be added into combination with pas de chat and assemblé to challenge the brain and body.

    - lateral jump with feet glued together

    - alternating between lateral jump and sideways sissonne (jump off two feet, land on the leading foot with the second foot out to the side and slide the second foot in to parallel, repeat)

    - take out the sideways jump and sissonne consecutively

    - switching feet - go half way across and turn your belly to the back

    - facing a partner

    - facing a partner - 3 sissonnes and tip toe to switch with your partner

    - facing a partner - 2 sideways sissonnes, 1 backward sissonne and tip toe to switch with your partner

  • Leaps - Leaping from one foot to the other can be natural for some children and very difficult for others. Starting with a prop to leap over is key.

    - run towards a mat and leap over (don’t worry about feet, which leg, or technique)

    - add mats so that they leap 2 or 3 times across the floor

    - eventually take away the mats and leap over invisible rivers (this is HARD for them - late 4s and 5s only)

    - start working toward leaping with a specific leg (5s). It is incredibly difficult for them to leap with a specific leg. It is best to start without focusing on how many steps the dancers is taking and just focus on leaping consistently with the right or left leg (use landmarks from the room rather than right or left as needed)

    - run run one leg leaps, run run the other leg leaps (late 5s or 6s)

Bubble Dance/Improv:

Bubble Dance is a combination of fun, targeted skills to diversify movement, spatial awareness, and making space for little dancers to create and enjoy movement freely.

We create our bubbles to focus on our spatial awareness and making sure to keep our bubbles moving independently without popping our own bubbles or anyone else’s.

We explore different levels, tempos, qualities of movement, pathways, directions, energy, emotions, and more.

The structure of class builds to a pay off for dancers and that’s why it is successful. Restraint in the beginning of class pushes towards freer traveling movement and eventually towards what dancers consider “free” movement. While they are still dancing within the constraints of a theme, they are free to create their own movement, which is satisfying and releases a burst of positive brain chemicals at the end of class.

Closure:

Closure is an opportunity to make a personal connection before dancers walk out the door. There is physical touch as students receive stickers, eye contact, and often a short conversation with the teacher or assistant. It’s a positive movement that tells dancers that their teachers care about them and will be happy to see them return.