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).
For my littlest dancers, we will fall down to the floor and do a song-led dance activity where they “go to sleep” such as Laurie Berkner’s The Goldfish or Joe Scruggs’ Late Last Night.
For the older dancers, I’ll teach a short combination that includes a fall to the ground.
We get out our gymnastics mats for this one and go rolling, cartwheeling, or handstand-ing down the mats!
Let’s make our muscles nice and LONG by stretching!
We may or may not get out our mini trampoline for this one, but we always jump! Star jumps, one foot hops over cones, jump turn arounds (tours), tuck jumps, you name it. Any kind of jump you can think of!
We get out the leaping cones and go leaping over cones. Or, for older dancers, practice our chasse run run leaps and side leaps.
For littles, I usually do freeze dance or dancing with a scarf or ribbon. For older dancers, we will work on a current combination or recital dance, or maybe learn something new!
This is our goodbye dance! I will pull out my magic love fairy wand and have the dancers freeze throughout the room. I will go dancing through the room then give the wand to a student. I will sit down and that student gets to dance through the room and hand the magic love fairy wand to another student. The first student sits down and the student holding the wand gets to dance. We continue until everyone had a turn to dance!
I hope you enjoy this class! If you’d like the printable, it’s here!
Leave a Reply