Hi teachers,

I posted this on the ask teacher board, but since the classes involve a lot of creative movement, it would be better on this board:

I teach with an outreach program in elementary schools for kids who wouldn't normally get to dance. Being their first dance class, they are not used to the structure and need to switch gears every 5 minutes or they get antsy and disruptive so to keep them intrigued I'll play a dance game that they think is fun and hides the fact that they are learning.

For example, i have a game I made up called "lillypads" in which I spread foam circles on the floor and they freestyle around the room. when i turn off the music they hop to a circle and I direct that they do 4______insert move here___. they love it. I also play choreographer, shadow puppets (1 dances, 1 copies) etc. My bag of tricks is running low and I am in need of some new, great games and would appreciate any suggestions.
Thanks!

The Lillypad game sounds very cute! I cannot wait to try this in my classes!

Different variations on freeze dance:

Students are butterflies or fairies on flowers. When music goes off they must find their own flower and go to sleep on it.

Students freeze when music goes off and I tell them what to be or do when music goes back on (dance tiny/big, underwater, slow/fast, robots, little mice, monkeys, a motor skill like skipping/gallops).

I really like your lillypad game, my students would love it. Have you tried using props with this group of students ie. tamborines, ribbons, hulahoops, etc.? This may keep thier interest a little longer while working on specific skills.

we do variations of charades:

we had a dancer sitting on the shelf in the store, we picked a child to dance into the store and press the magic button on the persons hand. Then that child did a solo and we guessed what she was, or was doing. The kids loved this game and they did solos!

Another variation is at Christmas time, it is Santa's workshop and I dance into the workshop and wind up all the toys, so everyone is dancing at the same time. Or of course it could be a toy store, or a pond, frozen in time!

I teach Irish, and here are some of the games that my class plays:

Musical Squares. I put foam squares around in a circle, and while I play the music, the kids have to do their skips around the circle. When the music stops, they have to find a square, and the kid left without a square is out. Then I take away a square and we keep playing. Just like musical chairs.

Irish irish step. Just like duck duck goose, but instead of chasing each other aroung the circle, they do skips.

Obstical course. I put foam squares on the floor in a pattern, and I use different colors to mean different things. Like black squares for stamp and clap, white means skips in a figure 8, blue for points, red for the bow...stuff like that. Then I just turn on the music and let them dance through the course.

I play "What Dance is it Mr. Wolf?"

You reply by saying (for example): Two Chasse ball changes.
They then take two steps forward. Make sure you're dancing with them though! (just keep your back to them).

I give my kids each a little flower (fake, very tiny ones from hobby lobby or any crafty stores) and we have a classical ballet song called "flowers" which is very cute. We smell our flowers, hide them behind our backs, turn in circles, wave them in the air, etc. They love it.

I will give one student a play wand, and she is the fairy queen. Everyone else curls up into a ball while the fairy queen goes around touching them with the wand. When they are touched, they "grow" into a flower. They love this!

I've never seen "Tooty Ta" by Dr. Jean not completely dissolve into a case of the giggles. And that gets them working on dancing and following directions! Double win!

"Remote" for ages 4 +

They pretend they are on television. Teacher holds a "remote" and announces the different actions on a remote. They kids interpret them while dancing to a song: Play, pause, FF, rewind, slow motion. You can change channel. "Dance Channel" "Animal Planet" "Disney" "cooking" "Fashion" etc. they really love it.

I really like many of the above ideas!

The one that I find to be a great hit with the younger groups is the Bee game: We sit on the floor in a circle with our toes pointed in towards each other leaving a cicrle of space in the middle and pretend to be a flower (each student is a pedal). One student is chosen to be the Bee and dances all around the room. When the Bee is close we have to touch our toes to close the flower, when the Bee dances far away we open the flower. The Bee is supposed to try to get inside the flower, in the middle of the circle (before everyone has a chance to touch their toes) to get the nectar, if the bee does that successfully they choose the next person to dance as the Bee.

What about having everyone freeze and one dancer at a time dances for 8 cts. At the end of their 8 counts they touch another dancer on the shoulder then freezes. The next dancer begins. You can extend the 8 cts too.

Pretend to be in a museum. Have the dancers create a picture you give to them. The picture has to look like a playground (dancers can be a slide, swings, etc) ; or a ski slope ; or a beach scene etc.

Right now we are pretending to be on Pirate Island in our dance classes. So I'm using the circle clustered together in threes to pretend that it's quicksand. then I make a big circle of them and it's a pond that we jump into and make an x jump.