Lesson Plans

Love and Valentines

January 11, 2016 by Erika Leave a Comment

I love dance. I love teaching. And I LOVE my students! As I pulled this lesson out to put it up on the blog, this valentine from last year fell out. Happy smiles! 🙂

Anyway…today’s lesson plan is all about Valentine’s day. I love holiday activities, because I can do them as a special day with almost all ages I teach! I made a simple lesson with “conversation hearts” (get the printable) that I put up on the walls. The students pick one heart, and the older ones get to guess what dance activity it’s linked to, then we do the associated activity. Simple, but so fun!

Usually on holidays I’ll bring a few treats (stickers, bouncy balls, small candies, etc.) and students can earn a treat if they have especially good behavior, perform a skill the best I have ever seen, or remember a sequence without help from me. However, that’s only for ages 5 and up. Anyone younger gets stuck in the “it’s not fair” stage and can’t function unless they’re first to get a prize. Anyway, here are the hearts:

This is our warm-up heart. We follow our regular warm-up routine for the class once someone picks this heart (follow the leader, mirroring, circle time, Zumba style, etc.). This often means that the warm-up is not first in class. 🙂

For my preschool dancers, I ask the students to create their own solo. It should go from one side of the room to the other and it has to have at least one jump (leap, spin, etc.). I play music and ask them to practice. Then, they perform for each other.

For older students, we’ll do jazz isolations, only moving ONE body part at a time. OR, we might create solos with a few more parameters (i.e. Your solo must start and end with a frozen shape and have at least one jump and one balancing shape), depending on the class.

Chasse means to chase. One foot chases the other. So, let’s do chasses! Forward, sideways, in a circle, etc.

Ballet barre work. Depending on the class that may be my 1, 2, 3, look at me ballet positions rhyme, a regular ballet barre class portion, jazz/modern foot articulation series, a barre stretch, or monkey dancing under the barre (for the 2 year olds).

[Read more…]

ABC’s Class

January 9, 2016 by Erika Leave a Comment

This class theme is one of the most adaptable lessons I teach. I can bring in my ABC visuals and change a letter movement right on the spot if I need too! Here’s the details:

Place alphabet cards (one for each letter of the alphabet) all around the room. I usually put them in order from A-Z and begin by singing the ABC’s with the dancers. Grab your printable here.
Ask a dancer to pick a letter. (They usually pick the letter that their names start with…so be aware of possible outbursts when Sophia takes Scarlet’s letter S). Then do a movement or activity that starts with that letter! Easy peasy. Below is my list of movements for each letter. Get creative!

*With my older students we’ll sometimes play the Name Game, where we will spell our names with movement. Details here.

A- arabesque, above (arms above head), attack

B- bounce, ball, boing, beat, bang, big, balance, blink, bourre, bear walk, butterfly stretch

C- child’s pose, crouch, chasse, creatively walk, crab walk, crawl, clap, jump over cones

D-dance, developpe, dig, daintily tip-toe, downward dog

E- echappe, energetically skip, elbow circles, elevate your arms or feet, elephant stomp

F- flip, forwards march, fly, flex your muscles, do the fish dance

G-go, great big jump, gallop, grin, grow

H-hop, half-split, heavy march, move your head

I-inchworm, itch, icicles (freeze dance)

J-jump, jiggle, jell-o legs, jog, jumping jacks

K-kangaroo jump, kick, kneel

L- leap, lazily turn, loop, laugh

M- march, mash, move

N- neck movements, noodle, nod, nose to knees

O- open and close, over, on top

P- prance, pirouette, plie, push and pull, pike stretch, pat

Q- quickly turn, quietly jump

R- run, releve, reach, roll, robot, ribbon dance

S- shake, shiver, snake crawls, slowly run, skip, salute, somersault, sit, stand, stretch, spin, slither, scarves

T- turn, tendu, teeter-totter, twirl, tip-toe

U- under and over, up (go up), upside down

V- v-arms, vrooom (like a car)

W- wildly crawl, wiggle, walk, wave, waddle

X- x-jump

Y- nod yes, yawn, yo-yo

Z- zig-zag, zoom

The Rainbow Fish

January 7, 2016 by Erika 3 Comments

Teaching dance classes with books is one of my favorite pastimes. I love how a story can motivate movement in children! The Rainbow Fish is a fun story for 3-8 year olds, and I always end this lesson talking about how we can share our dancing with others. Here’s the lesson:

Show pictures of several sea creatures and talk about how they might move (for the printable visuals, click here)

Fish: Wiggle your head

Octopus: Wiggle your arms and legs

Crab/Lobster: Tiny and sharp steps

Sea Turtle: Slow, sustained/smooth movement

2. Turn on music and guide the children through an improvisation of how these sea creatures move.

3. Read aloud Marcus Pfister’s The Rainbow Fish. Whenever the book says the word “fish” all the children must wiggle their head like a fish. Rainbow fish learns that he can make the other fish in the sea happy by sharing his scales. What can you share that makes other people happy?

4. We all have bodies to dance with and we are going to create a dance that we can share with our teacher, and if you remember, you can share it with your mom or dad when you get home. Assign the children into two groups: either one’s or two’s. All of the one’s go out into the space and make a sea animal shape (any frozen shape will do). All the two’s, when I say go, dance into the space quick and sharp like a crab and then make a different sea animal shape. Alternate one’s and two’s using the various sea animals we learned.

5. Place several mats around the room. These will represent the islands in the sea. When I turn on the music, everyone will dance around the room without touching the mats, wiggling your arms and legs like an octopus. When the music stops, you must freeze in an octopus shape and be touching a mat. (Repeat with other sea animals). More than one child may touch a mat. As you repeat, the instructor can be the “evil eel” and take away two or three mats each time until there are only a few left.

6. Have children do a Good-bye dance. Line up on one end of the space and, while playing music, have each child one by one dance across the room, practicing what they can share with their parents about how sea animals move.

And if you’ve got extra time, enjoy these printable Rainbow Fish coloring pages!