Holiday Dance Class

Hello there,

I know it's so so late that I write about this holiday class now, the program even completed last month. But I just want to share with you about my experience here teaching young children. I'm not really often teach young children, so this was almost a new thing to me.

This holiday class was took place at Aurora Ballet Center where I teach ballet. The majority of children who signed up for this class was from outside our school. It meant that most of them are new to dancing. For my class, there were 10-12 children from 2.5 to 4 years old. The duration was 1.5 hours per meeting for 10 days.

So, in the class, there were 3 children who were 2.5 or 3 years old. They were so cute (but then most children are cute). Two of them hadn't started speaking yet while the another one spoke fluently for her age range. Our class started with greetings, a little warming up and then I choreo a dance for them. Well actually they imitated me all along. Then I would take them to bigger studio to have joined modern dance with bigger children. After this, I would play games with them or sing a song together and ended the class with free dance and curtsey.

She tied her own shoe laces when she saw them got out from her shoes

What i want to share with you here is in teaching young children, we must be super careful. I would like to set some disciplines in my class but maintain the fun vibes in class. Young children don't really understand things fully yet and they imitate the teacher along. So let's say the teacher does "weird" things in class, they will surely follow along. You don't want them to go home and show their mom those "weird" things, right? And although the children haven't started speaking, it doesn't mean that they don't understand what the teacher does in class. They follow along and have their own thinking and preferences.

There were one time this child (who still hasn't start talking) wanted to dance with props, she came to me, took my hand and lead me to the props' box. She looked at me with her big round eyes and smile while pointed at the box. When I opened the box for her, she would wait for me to take out the stick she wanted because that's what I did in class. They must queue and wait patiently for their turn to get the props from me. Her behavior was so different from the first time the encountered the props' box.

I really enjoyed teaching children. In class, I'm not the only one who was teaching, the children also taught me a lot. The process of learning was not one way thing. For all the time I teach, I always amazed and surprised with their attitude and behavior.

Thank you for reading. I will post about my trip to London soon.
Until then love,
sylvlam