Those little...

I have been especially tried in the last two weeks by my 4/5 year old class. This is really by no fault of their own and is mostly because I simply don't know how to teach such small things. I don't understand their minds and I have no idea how to handle them.

So today I went on a hunt to find some tips and came across this fantastic article. 12 Tips for Teaching Tots by Nichelle at Danceadvantage.net. And all of the sudden it hit me. OH! Make dance-time playtime! Who knows why I haven't been incorporating more games and imagination into their classes. I know their favorite thing is to do the flower dance at the end of our class, so why haven't I put two and two together? Children need imagination and have such great ones, I need to put it to better use.

So here's to hoping I can make this work in my class tomorrow.

Halloween games

Halloween snuck up on me and all of the sudden I realized that I would need to come up with some Halloween games for my classes in the week before Halloween. Here are the games I have been using.

4-7 year olds

• Pin the spider on the spider web
• My 4 year olds thought this game was so fun. I didn't spin the 4 and 5 year olds with the blindfold on, just the 6 and 7 year olds. Although my 6 year class seems to be unusually intelligent, half of them are in a Chinese immersion program and I think they are smarter than me. 
• Pass the pumpkin although instead of having them decorate a pumpkin when they get "out", I just gave them a page to color and some crayons to do it with. 
• This game was a riot! Not only was it fun for them to pass the pumpkin around and try not to be the last one with it, but since they still had something fun to do once they were "out" there wasn't any whining. Amazing. 

Preteens

• Make a spiderweb. Take a thing of yarn (what do you call those things? They aren't actually in balls...). Make a circle with your class, the teachers grabs one end of the string and throws the rest of the yarn to a girl across the circle, each girl does the same. Once everyone has grabbed the yarn once, you have made a giant spiderweb!

Teenagers

• Unwrapping candy game - classic game trying to unwrap candy with mittens. 
• Beans - Split the class in two or three groups, each group has two bowls, one full of beans and one empty, and each on a different side of the room. Using a plastic spoon, the team, one by one, fills the empty bowl with beans from the full bowl. 

I'm very glad the internet exists because I never would have thought of these games on my own. I'm not a game type of person and never liked playing games at dance when I was a dancer. It was way more fun as a teacher!

It was especially fun to see my sweet dancers in their little costumes. I'm kicking myself that I didn't get a picture!

Good question...

Today I under-prepared for my 6 year old class. I have a 6 year class and a 7 year class back to back, the 6 year class is very small, the 7 year very big. So I always seem to have under-prepared for one and over-prepared for another.

After teaching my director was asking how my classes have been going (she is always very supportive, and checking on me as a first-year teacher). I told her that I had played a lot of review games in my 6 year old class (I have found you can make nearly any dance game a review game!). She asked why. I told her I had originally planned this day as a review day, meaning I didn't plan to teach the girls any new steps, but quickly realized in the middle of class that this left me under-prepared for this super fast class.

Then she asked me a great question "So what are you going to change?"

I'm really glad I have a director who asks me the questions I should be asking myself. Since then I've planned next week and I highly doubt it will be under-planned. If so, then I'm going to have to start teaching these 6 year olds the same curriculum I am teaching my 7 year olds.

Trying New Games.

I haven't been sure where to start with this blog since I'm a few weeks into the dance year already and I have learned a million things so far. But I decided to just start where I am, and fill in the blanks where necessary.

I have a particularly trying 4/5 year Tap/Ballet class. Not because they're not wonderful, but because I've never been great with small children. In addition, I have one sweet little dancer who is very chatty, wants to talk to me a lot, and has a hard time staying with the class and just wants to dance around on her own. These are the things I tried this week that seemed to help a lot.

• Simon/Teacher Says
• To review the ballet positions or moves we have already learned, I decided to play Simon Says. This is especially fun with this group of girls because they are still really learning how to play this game ie. they aren't too smart for it. :)
• Follow the Leader
• We also played Follow the Leader with one step in ballet and one step in tap. This is a great way to get them to practice steps, but also they are playing a game. In addition it is great to be able to pick those girls who are behaving well to be leaders, so it can be a good behavioral incentive. 
• Flower dance
• Instead of the cool-down I regularly do (I am a hawk about cool downs) I did this. I put on a pretty ballet song and they pretended they were seeds. Once I came over and watered them, they grew up into flowers and could dance however they wanted as flowers. Sometimes I would tell them the wind was blowing or the sun was shining, etc., so they could react to that. Then I touched them one by one to tell them to go to sleep. Then we all came together in a big flower (a circle with our toes pointed to each other in the middle) and we opened and closed the flower a few times before our ending bow. 

Another thing I have tried to do with my sweet dancer with a big imagination and a small attention span is give her clear options. She can choose to dance with us or sit down on a chair at the front of the room. She wasn't perfect, but she was much better than last week! She loves to dance so I know she will improve, she already has in three weeks! I think I will try to let them do more creative dancing, allowing them to move as they like, because she really enjoys that quite a bit. 

Also, I pretty much exclusively played Call Me Maybe for them today. Maybe that's why they were so good. :)