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:

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