I'm going to be teaching my first ever CM class to ages 18 months to 2 years. I will be without an assistant (scary!) and I need some great ideas. The class will be 30-45 minutes.

I start my creative classes in circle time where we play stretching games. Here are some of my favorites:

Hungry Bunny:
Start sitting legs stretched out in front, knees straight, hands are making bunny ears up by your ears, and you're pretending to sleep. I say: "The bunnies are sleeping, now the bunnies wake up and they say "I'm Hungry!!" (get the kids to say it too), so the bunnies hop down to the carrot patch where they see some carrots. Oh no, here comes the farmer, HIDE! (nose to knees) The farmer's gone back into the barn, hop back into your bunny hole. The bunnies are sleeping (repeat the whole thing 3 or 4 times)"


We scoop up peanut butter on one foot and jelly on the other foot to make a sandwich before doing a butterfly stretch.

Butterfly:
During butterfly stretch, each child gets to choose whether they're a butterfly or a dragonfly and what color they are, then they run around the circle and back to their seat. The other children have to flap their wings to help the runner fly!

Weather:
Sitting criss cross applesauce, make round sun arms overhead, the sun turns to soft clouds (soft arms wave overhead), then the wind starts to blow and the clouds move quicker and quicker (wave arms faster) and it starts to rain (arms move up and down in front of the body). It's raining harder and harder and there's lightning and then thunder (lean forward and drum the floor with hands)!!

Catch the stars:
Everyone makes a round bucket with arms in front of their body, then reach to the ceiling with one hand and put the star in the bucket, repeat on the other side, alternating sides so they stretch the muscles that run on the side of the ribcage. Then they use both arms to catch the moon and finally throw the stars back up to catch next week!



After we stand up and do simple plies, releves, and jumps, we line up to do "Animals Across the Floor". The kids go from on end of the room to the other doing animal walks. We usually iraffes, elephants, kittens, dogs, alligators, crabs, horses, and bunnies.

Then we grab a quick drink and start the lesson. We talk about pathways, rythym, directions, high/middle/low, and other things I can't think aobut now.

After we're done with the learning part, we play games like freeze dance, musical hula hoops, and scarf dance. The kids love the cat and mouse game where each of them gets a carpet square and sits on it. When the cat is sleeping and the music plays the mice dance, when the music stops the cat tries to catch the mice. You might mention that they can't scream or you will be deaf by the end of class.

Hope that helps!

Jen

Seriously go through all these post and you will have yourself an awesome class! There are some great ideas here. I do think you should almost overbook your time to make sure there is no down time espeically if there are few kids at first. PROPS are great, definitely worth the money! Kids love to pretend with the props and as long as the kids are having fun the parents will be happy. I sing alot of songs with my kids such as ABC's, 5 little monkeys,etc. I always make sure to go over basic ballet just to make sure they are still getting some good direction and guidance for when they are older and ready to move up. Hope this helped, let me know!!

It must be the kids I get, I just started these classes. And it seems that some are into it and others just want to hang on to mommy.....just staring at me. As if to say "what is this crazy lady doing singing these silly songs to me..." It is so frustrating, I think I am doing something wrong....