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Featured Prop:
What are They?
The Little Steps are high quality wooden balance stones that allow our dancers to explore both dynamic & static balance. The stones have a non-slip rubber sole which allows them to be used on any type of flooring or stack them on top of each other without slipping!
How We Use Them:
🟥 First we use them to help our dancers perform static balance movements. We place them throughout our Story Dance Pathways™️ as a resting point to stop & balance on one or two foot.
🟧 We have also used them for dynamic balance activities where dancers have to walk across them or jump over them! We’ve placed them together to build rainbows & even a caterpillar that our dancers can dance on.
🟨 Musical Instruments! We’ve also used them as a musical instrument component. We’ve tapped egg shakers, rhythm sticks or just our hands & feet to hear the sounds they made.
🟩 We’ve also stacked them on top of each other to build steps for our dancers to explore moving on or over different levels!
🟦 We also use these as place markers to mark self space areas for freezing or balancing during free dance exploration.
How have The Little Steps benefited our dancers?
🟥 Multi-Sensory! Their different colors captivate our visual learners! Our auditory learners love that they can turn these into an instrument. Tactile learners love exploring different touch such as taps, rubs, tickles or pats. Kinesthetic learners love dancing on, off, over, around and through them.
🟧 Improve Balance! We are always trying to improve how long our dancers can balance on one leg because then we can start teaching more advanced movements such as skips! These allow us to practice both static & dynamic balance.
🟨 Conceptual! We have used these to explore dance concepts such as space, action, levels, pathways, directions, & positions!