Hello, I am teaching a preschool ballet/tap class this fall and haven't taught this age group in a very long time. Does anyone have a class outline or format you go by? Do you tend to stay out in center floor for plies, tendues? Or do you go to the barre? For the tap portion I would love to hear your ideas / thoughts. Do you do travel across the floor or mostly stay in the center? Any tips or activities you would like to share would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks very much!

I have a very strict outline for my preschool classes, because I feel that's the only way I'll ever get anything accomplished. Here's how I do it:

5 Minutes: Attendance, sharing time (Things they have done over the week or something special about their day)

10 minutes of Creative Movement Warm ups: I have a cd of all creative movement music...I'm not sure where you could find it but it's been a godsend for me with this age group. But dances like "the chicken dance" and "the hokey pokey" Etc work well too

10-15 minutes in the center for ballet: I have tried both using the barre and being in the center and I find with that age group, using the barre is just too complicated for them. So I always startby reviewing what we did in past weeks and then always have a new "Skill of the week" for them to learn. I build it up so they get really excited about it.

5-10 Minutes to learn and/or polish a routine

10-15 Minutes in center for tap: I am a huge fan of doing tap across the floor. With my choreography especially, my girls are always traveling in tap. So, I feel that's a good thing to teach right off the bat. So I do the same thing with "skill of the week" for tap. And we do things like, Toe Heel steps, Heel steps, Toe steps, Toe backs, Shuffle steps, shuffle hop steps, flap heels, flap walks...well you get the idea.

5-10 minutes to learn and/or polish a routine

Preschool dance is my passion. So, if you have any other questions, just let me know!

Your comments are wonderful, thank you so much!!! What do you think of having a dress up time. I have lots of princess dress-up clothes, tiaras, necklaces, etc. Do you think this would take up too much time? The class is only 45 min and it's not considered to be a creative movement class. My fear is they will get bored too quickly if I don't incorporate some kind of fun time.

Thanks again!

In my opinion, dress up might be more commotion than you want to get yourself in to. But completely up to you. I mean with 3 and 4 year old girls, by the time they all of them pick out what they want and you get them all dressed and undressed. Oh man, sounds scary to me lol. But if you are looking for time fillers, at the end if there's extra time (I forgot to mention this) I always do a cool down. We either make a pretend pizza or bake a cake. You sit in a circle, all the girls open their legs in a straddle. You start by rolling the dough (roll your hands out on the floor) Dump a big jug of pizza sauce and smear it on the floor, then sprinkle the cheese. Then go around the circle and each person get a turn to add a topping and pretend to put in on. Then you put it in the oven (put oven mitts on) and use your hands to be like the ticker on a timer and count to 5 or 10 or whatever and go around in a circle for each minute. Then take it out and pretend to eat it. You could do the same with a cake (make the batter, add the toppings and bake... I know it might seem silly but my girls LOOOOOOVE it. They love giggling about the silly toppings people pick and stuff. And it usually takes 5-10 minutes so it helps to fill time at the end when people are getting antsy to be done. It's also a nice way to get everyone to relax and cool down before they leave.

sorry if I rambled. haha

good luck!

after i do warm ups i do animals to get out "the sillies" I play some music and say lets all be puppies, kitties, bears, dinosours, butterflies, bumblebees (watch out, 4 year-olds are big on stinging with their buts!), froggies, rolly pollys, turtles, etc... I change it up every week, but I ALWAYS include froggies because it gets them to work on the basic mechanics of jumping and tends to tire them out. between each animal I shout freeze and have them hold their pose for a second before moving to the next. When I teach shuffles I teach them at the barre with one hand because of balance, but other than that i tend to stay away from the barre unless they are a class of slippery footed children

"What do you think of having a dress up time?"

I taught my first year of classes last year and taught in a very small community where dance is really just a novel thing, and had some issues with parents and dancers taking the whole thing even a little bit seriously.

I tried using crowns and princess beads in my 3-4 class. The crowns were sort of an incentive, at the end of each class I would nominate a "Princess of Point", "Queen of Quiet", and "Countess of Cooperation" who would get to wear a crown during warm up the following week. The beads were an in class incentive to keep the girls focused...they would be given a warning for behavior issues, then beads taken away on 2nd offense. Both concepts worked great....the first 2 weeks....after that they got bored with it, or one of them would decide they didn't want to wear the beads and it would turn into a "let's give the beads & crowns back to Miss Rya" event. I eventually fased them out and even though the girls still asked for them toward the end, I definitely did not miss them.

One thing that still works great though is when we do our butterfly stretches/knee bounces we go around our circle and say what color our butterfly wings are, even my 5-6 year olds love it.

For cool down, I put on Shirley Temple's "Good Ship Lollipop" then I say everyone sit on the floor and cross your legs with bent knees to make a boat. Then we draw lollipops in the air and go around saying what color/flavor is your lollipop. We rock in our boats and clap in time with the rhythm. In the end, we cross our hearts and pretend to go asleep, until "All Aboard" when I say WAKE UP!!

5-6 year olds??? My 9-10 year olds still ask to do butterfly colors!

The only piece of advice that I can offer not already mentioned is to not do the same thing for too long. Keep the class moving. If they are standing centre floor for a while, have them make a circle; things like that.

Regarding dress up - they get just as big of a kick playing "pretend" dress up as they do with real clothes!

> Pretend they have a glass crown on their head for when you want them to keep their back straight or standing tall
> Pretend to wear high heels for walking on tippy toes / releve
> We also look through an old costume book and pick out our favorite costume and pretend to put it on for our show (practicing for the recital)
> We play getting ready for the show - "fix our hair", put on "make-up", shine our shoes, put on our smiles... they have fun even if its not real! They love to tell you what color dress they are wearing.. if it has sparkles or rainbows - they are so creative at this age.

I teach 3-4 year old ballet/tap combo in 45 mins and it's never enough time! I can't imagine adding a dress up time into it but maybe you'll find a way to make it work. In ballet we start with stretches, then go across floor doing bunny hops, frog leaps, walk like a duck with scarves, releve walks as bees, and releve run also as bees. Then we practice chasses in a circle, and skipping. Then we go to letters to do port de bras, tendus, plies, passes, and arabesques. Sometimes we use the parachute to move in a circle and go in and out. Tap I start in a circle and to taps, heel, heel in front-toe in back. then we use hula hoops as wheels and march around the room to Wheels on bus. we do Ants go marching to practice knees, pockets, clap. We also do shakers to BINGO for rhythm, and at letters we do slow shuffle combos (brush spank step step brush spank step, brush spank tap in back step etc) and Jack in the box which my kids love! Then we wrap up with 2 mins of freeze dance and voila-class flew by! Hope this helps!

My preschool classes are 45 minutes, here's what I do:

Tap first (these shoes are harder to get on, this way mom and dad do these shoes, and I find that it gets a little of their crazy energy out to do tap first, then we slow down with ballet and they are a little more focused).

*They stand in a line across the room and we warm up - toe taps to the side, heel taps to the side, heep step, tip step, toe drops, heel drops, marches.
*Then we practice one step center - shuffle step, dig brush step, maxi fords for the older 2nd year preschoolers.
*Then 1 step across the floor - toe heel, brush step (pre-flaps)
*If we are working on a dance (right before Christmas for parent watch week or during recital time) we practice the dance for 5-10 minutes.

Then we do ballet:

*We always start in a circle holding hands - bourre around the circle both ways
*Stop and open our story book (feet to first), make diamonds (plie, the diamond visualization really helps get their knees going out over their toes with out saying it, they aren't old enough to really understand that concept, but they can make a diamond shape with their legs!), then we do some tendus and petite piques, and balance on 2 feet releve and 1 foot flat.
*Across the floor we do gallops, skips, ballet walks, grande battements, and leap over puddles. During recital time we work on a very simple dance.

Fun game - either play with the parachute, freeze dance, bop til you drop, etc.

I finish up my babies and my Ballet 1 class with a pretend game,
we're mermaids asleep on a rock, when we wake up we brush our hair and start to put on all sorts of things like crowns, bracelets, rings, tail bracelets, check ourselves in our shell mirror and jump into the sea for a swim with the dolphins. After our swim we go back to our rock and have to remember to take all of our finery off before we go to sleep again.
I think if we did all of that with real items it would be a full class on it's own, as it is it's a nice bit of imaginative fun for them. I do use other props during the lesson, we have fairy wands or pin wheels for using with running and scarfs or streamers for floaty movements where we pretend to be waves or clouds.

I've never used the barre for this age group as they have no idea of alignment they wont be able use it properly. Most of the things I do are in a circle or following the leader as straight lines are also something we still need to work on in this age group.

I try to keep things moving and chop and change activities, we start of with marching or trains as a follow the leader, then frogs and bees or birds and then come into a circle for some more formal bits like plies and tendus but we call them windows and doors and sautes which we do as two plie's and a saute, we call it bend and a bend and big jump.
Then we have stretching, butterflies, front stretches with curl in and stretch forward and side stretch with the legs in second, we also pretend we're making a pizza or a cake whilst doing this one and having a rest whilst it cooks over one leg and then a rest on the other one too.

Then we get up for skips, fairy runs and then we split into two groups for 'creeping past the wicked witches house', one group pretend to go to sleep and the other group are creeping very quietly past her house to get home, when the wicked witches wake up they have to turn into trees and stand very still until the witches go back to their house. Then we all swop and do it again in different groups, sometimes we have to do this one several times it's that popular.

Then we use our streamers or scarves followed by gallops with a partner, then Mermaids and also some nursery rhymes with actions, Little Miss Muffet is the favorite followed by Humpty Dumpty.

You have to watch the children's reaction to what your doing with this age group, sometimes you'll see the attention span wavering, then it's time to change your plan and move onto another section or mix thing up a little bit, don't change things too much though as young children like familiarity and learn more by repetition.

One tip I forgot to mention-try to plan your classes ahead and burn a cd of the specific songs you plan to use for that class! I make 4 and rotate them throughout the year that way there is less down time while they wait for you to change cd's etc..I find that to be when they get into trouble!

^I have two princess cds and a tap cd and a remote for my cd player! I stopped using my ipod for preschool classes when we got the players with remotes! I can play pause and skip songs all I want without ever turning my back on the kids. I only change cds when we change shoes!

I would recommend a remote control for your stereo!