Spooky Dance Moves

Here is a copy of a Blog post at Dance Arts where I am privledged to teach a few dance classes each week.  We had a fun time using the ghost toilet paper rolls for the obstacle course this week!  My good friend Jessica Andrews writes the posts for the blog and I appreciate her highlighting a few things from my classes.  Wish I could write and edit as well as her!  Thanks Jessica...

 

Spooky Moves You Can Do at Home!

Learning toe touches on top of the ghost!

If you've got a little one at home, you have probably already answered the question, "When is it going to be Halloween?" Finally, Halloween is here!

Miss Paige teaches Creative Movement at Dance Arts. She thought up this great way to incorporate movement and imagination into the holiday. All you need is some rolls of toilet paper, a permanent marker, and a little kid with lots of energy!

You (or your child) can draw little ghost faces onto the rolls of toilet paper. Stack them up in the hallway, and you have a great game of ghost bowling! This is a perfect activity you can do prior to trick or treating as a way of keeping your little one busy as you prepare for going out.

Draw faces on toilet paper rolls, and line them up for ghost bowling!

Grade School kids enjoy ghost bowling too!

Want to get your kiddos energy out after they've eaten too much candy? Try spacing out a few of the ghosts for your child to run and leap over. This is a great way to build their skills while having fun with the Halloween theme for even a few days after the big event!

Every week in Miss Paige's Creative Movement class we do an obstacle course. You can incorporate these fun little ghosts anyway you like into your own obstacle course at home. Turn on some Halloween Tunes like Monster Mash, or Purple People Eater, and your set!

We also have a great way to incorporate those little spider rings you get on Halloween. It will help your child with their ballet arm movements and is appropriate for a 3-12 year old. So if you get any plastic spider rings on Halloween, make sure to save them. We'll show you soon what you can do with them in a future blog!

What is Creative Dance?

What is Creative Dance? And how does it differ from other dance forms? Most people know what to expect with entering a ballet classroom. The students dress uniformly, their hair done up in a bun. Time is devoted to learning specific skills at the barre, and turning, jumps and leaps, as well as slow movements are taught with great specificity. A jazz class has uptempo music, the students shake their body, learn jazz hands, kicks, turns and more. Likewise even a non tapper knows what to expect in a tap class, where the students feet will learn to move like percussion instruments. Yet the open ended world of Creative Dance, may leave you wondering what exactly it is?

Creative Dance can be as broad as the term itself. At Dance Arts, we have specific ways we teach our Creative Dance program, so that it is age and brain compatible with your young preschooler. Preschoolers often can get discouraged if forced into the regimented dance form too young. Here are just a few examples of how we gear our program to your little one:

Each week students sing a welcome song, then say their name as they practice being comfortable in a group.

Singing the Welcome Song!

Next the students perform a Brain Dance. The Brain Dance moves students through all the developmental patterns in the order a baby goes through them. Breath, tactile, core/distal, head/tail, upper/lower, body side, cross lateral, vestibular and eye tracking.

Students work on cross lateral movements, these movements help get the left and right hemisphere's of the brain communicating, which helps boost brain power more than any of the other movements.

Practicing Head/Tail connection.

Working on eye tracking by following their thumbs. This is an important skill for reading and for being able to see numbers aligned in columns.

Another important part of our creative dance class is the obstacle course. The obstacle course changes every month. The students move around the room clockwise, practicing various skills at a rapid pace. They grow skills by getting tons of repetition.

Crawling through the tunnel in the obstacle course.

Practicing tip toes around cones in the obstacle course.

These are just a few of the highlights for our creative dance class. If you or a friend has a little one between the ages of 3 to 5, be sure to give us a call for your free trial class!