I teach 3-5s and last year we did a lot fo ballet in the classes and based the tap and jazz around these. This year,they have separate ballet classes which means a whole different structure to the jazz and tap, which is good to get a bit more time, esp for tap, but a lot fo my games and things were ballet based, so know I'm a little stuck for ideas!

Any good suggestions for jazz and tap for this age? They are only little so don't do anything fancy and I usually give them some sort of free dance, but some I had last year are pretty good and are ready for that bit more.

Al Gilbert has a CD called Rap Tap & Jazz for young ones. I ordered it this year and have used it a little here and there. The kids really like it a lot, but I haven't yet familiarized myself with it completely. For tap at this age we just stick to the basic tap togethers, heel togethers, toe backs, shuffle step, boogie woogies, rocking heels, flash trick step, jump out-jump in, jump to the right then 2 claps, then to the left clap clap, side together side together knee bend twice (they can do this holding hands, shuffle toe. They love to march around the room follow the leader style; for this I use the Mickey Mouse Club March, but you could select your own music for this and change it up from week to week. They also love to make a choo choo train, holding onto each others shoulders and scoot around the room. This makes a cute stage entrance and exit also and they can practice making the train go forward and backward. I like to impress upon them about counting to 8 while dancing; I always ask them what is our magic number and they all know that it's 8. Let them practice counting to 8 and clapping to the music to instill this. Also counting while doing knee bends up and down. I'm a big Al Gilbert fan for children's work; his material can be found at musicworksunlimited.com One that I use has left foot right foot, tick tocks, apple trees and lots of other songs and dances that can be used for class and the stage. For the jazz portion you will need to keep it very basic of course: perhaps head and shoulder isolations (up and down), plies (bounce bounce straight), lots of shakey-shakey stuff, twisting down to the floor and up, maybe incorporate their tap steps jazzy style using different arms, jazzy point passes. We make lots of circles, especially when doing the jazzy warm-ups and stretches. They also like to practice doing jazz freeze poses, changing the pose every 8 counts or so. I hope you can use something from this very long-winded post! Best of luck with your class.