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Listen while you read! DTL S2 E11 - How to Teach a Mommy and Me Dance Class during the Pandemic
I just taught my first Mommy and Me class since March and I am so happy to be able to get my Mom’s and toddlers back in the studio. Mommy and Me is such a great way to market your school and build your preschool program. You can really build solid relationships with the moms entering your studio and they can witness first hand how you are with their child. This will help them determine if they want to continue having their child dance with you throughout their dance journey.
Today as I talk about Mommy and Me classes, I want to talk about how classes were structured prior to COVID And how they are different now. I was nervous for today’s class because I have not taught a Mommy and Me class since the pandemic started, so I wasn’t sure if the structure that I developed would be successful. Ultimately it worked out great and all the moms were so appreciative of the measures I took to keep everyone feeling safe while also having fun.
I open my Mommy and Me Classes up to kids ages 18months-3. I will not teach two year-olds without a mom or caregiver. There is such a large difference in development between a 2 year old and three year old that I truly believe all dancers under 3 still need mom in the room not only to support them and help through class, but also to teach them important skills that comes with dancing with others in a group setting. If you are teaching dancers under 3 I highly recommend you make the class a parent participation class. I’ll get a little more into this later on as I talk more about structuring your Mommy and Me Classes for Success. I also keep the class open to 3 year-olds because I still have a ton of 3 year-olds who are still very much attached to mom. If I get a 3 years old in a class that isn’t a parent participation class but has a hard time separating from mom, I always recommend they try Mommy and Me first. They can get to know me and trust me as an educator and I can build trust and a relationship with their child. That is really important.
When I first started teaching Mommy and Me classes I tried to structure the classes as I would any dance class. With warm ups, standing exercises, across the floor and a free dance time at the end. This structure was never really successful. The kids didn’t ever want to sit long enough to do the stretches. I couldn’t get them to stand on spots let alone make any type of feet positions or perform technical dance movements. Across the floor was probably the most successful part of the structured class as parents held their kids hands and guided them across the floor. I wish the entire class could have been free dancing time because that was really the best part of class where the kids just got to have fun. That’s when I realized that I needed to make Mommy and Me more of a structured play time with a focus on movement. So that would be my first tip to anyone out there considering starting a Mommy and Me Class. Don’t focus too much on technique or teaching a style of dance. It should be general movement partnered with play. I say the class moves at your own pace and meeting the kids where they are not forcing them to do something they don’t want to do.
I invested in a couple props and these are the props that I would recommend every dance teacher invest in if you are going to consider starting a Mommy and Me class. The more toys you can give them to play with, the better.
The Parachute! The first prop every dance teacher should invest in is the parachute. The kids LOVE IT! We start with the parachute in every class every week and I keep it exciting by playing with the parachute based on the concept we are exploring. Week 1 for example, we explore space. So we start sitting on our spots in self space and we make waves with the parachute, shake the parachute fast and slow and take the parachute high and low. Then we explore the parachute play in general space. We walk with the parachute around the room, we make it small by collapsing the parachute in towards the center and expanding the parachute to make it large. The kids love the parachute so much we bring it out a second time at the end of class when we do the teddy bear twist. This is where our teddy bears get to go for a ride in the parachute. We toss the parachute up and down and throw the teddy bears. Then at the end all of the kids get to ride with the teddy bears inside the parachute. Obviously during the pandemic we can’t play with the parachute which is very sad, but the kids today didn’t even seem to notice that we didn’t have the parachute and had fun playing with the props we did use.
Egg Shakers! The next prop that you should include in every Mommy and Me Class is the Egg Shaker. This is such a simple and affordable musical instrument. I love that it is small and fits in their hands. AND It makes a ton of noise. I steer clear of rhythm sticks in
Scarves. Scarves are a go to! Kids love throwing the scarves, twirling with them. Letting them fall on their heads or on the floor, they even enjoy playing peek a boo with them.
Teddy Bears. Our Mommy and Me class is actually called Mommy, Teddy Bear and Me™. We include teddy bears because they are a great tool to relieve anxiety. I introduce the teddy bears towards the end of class and we have them out until our closing exercise. We always have downtime which is our cuddle time where we just sit with our teddy bears and parents and play a song. The kids can do what ever they want during this time.
Bubbles - The last prop you should include is bubbles. Kids love bubbles, but they also are so good to develop eye tracking, hand-eye coordination and fine motor development.
So you’re probably wondering how we taught during a pandemic when we need all these props. What I did for my families was included all of the props with the exception of the parachute. In their own personal prop kit. So each family took home two egg shakers, two scarves, one teddy bear and a bottle of bubbles. They loved getting their own person prop bag, it may be something I include even post pandemic. Nothing in the prop kit was too expensive so it is a really nice gesture and I can encourage parents to continue practicing and playing with the props at home to continue the learning.
Pre-Pandemic I was able to use the space differently. We could do a lot of our movement activities traveling around the room in a circle. Due to social distancing requirements we were not able to that today. So what I did instead was provided everyone with their own spot. The class is on carpet, so I was able to use a velcro star for each parent and child combo and instead of running around the room, we ran around our own personal star. It worked really great, we only had dancers run a little crazy once or twice but moms were able to reel them back to their star. You could also use poly dots, or tape squares to signify where your parent tot combos should be.
If you start a Mommy and Me class, I would also highly suggest focusing your class on a concept. It makes teaching the class so much easier to have a focus, and it allows you to switch up the class for new adventures while still keeping the general structure the same. The concepts we explore in Mommy and Me include:
Space
Locomotor/Non-Locomotor
Tempo
Sizes
Levels
Body Parts
Pathways
Directions
I’m going to go through our whole first class today so you can get a feel not only how I taught the concept but how we did so following COVID guidelines.
First I placed my velcro stars around the room in a circle shape so we could all still feel connected even though we were in our own space. The concept today was space being as it was the first class. I always like starting my classes sitting down. I think it pulls the energy down to start so we can build our excitement up throughout the class. We did not start with a parachute but instead with our egg shakers. The first activity with the egg shakers was on our self space. So we sat on our stars and just used our arms and hands to shake our shakers. I picked the song "Shake your Tambourine" from the album Rain or Sun Singing Fun. We start just shaking eggs however we want, then we shake them high, and low. Next is fast and slow. Then really soft and really loud and finally back to shaking them however we want. After sitting we repeated the song standing, but this time we explored general space. Instead of moving around our entire room, we just moved around our own stars. We started with walking around our stars and shaking our tambourines. When it was time to shake high, we continued walking but put our arms high to the sky. When it was time to shake low we crawled low around our stars. Shaking fast we ran and shaking slow we stepped really slow. For soft, we tip toed and for loud we marched. At the end we found our spots and shook our egg shakers however we wanted.
After our egg shaker exploration we got out our scarves. Today was a scarf exploration on our self-space. We imagined our scarves were snowflakes as we danced to the song “Snow” from the album From Snowflakes to Rainbows. There were no rules to this game. We threw our scarves high to the sky and let them float to the ground. We swirled like snowflakes by holding our scarves and spinning. We caught the snowflakes on our heads or other body parts. We played the song twice and just had general exploration with our scarves.
Our next game we put all of our props away. We danced to the song "Run Baby Run" by Caspar Baby Pants. We explored our self and general space in this song. We ran around our stars, jumped on our stars. Clapped and sang on our stars. Danced around our stars and did our swings on our stars. This song is so much fun. Everyone should add it to their Mommy and Me playlists.
After Run Baby Run, we got our teddy bears out. We danced to the song “Teddy Bear” from the
album the Best of Wee Sing. This is such an easy action based song. First we turn around with our teddy bears. Then touch the ground. We reach up high on our tip toes. Then Touch the sky and do big jumps. We do little piques with our toes when we show our shoes. We march to go up stars and then we all lay down to say goodnight.
After Teddy Bear Teddy Bear Turn Around, it is time to begin our cool down. This is where we play our Teddy Bear song which is “Me and My Teddy Bear” from the album Teddy Bear Songs by Kidzone. This is strictly cuddle time and playing with our bears.
Class ends with bubbles for one song. I always use the song "Balloon Kids" by Alkis
The class was so successful even with the restrictions in place. I wanted to share the experience and how everything was structured to encourage you to start your Mommy and Me classes back up. Or if you’ve never had a Mommy and Me class, to help you see how easy and fun mommy and me can be. It’s such a great class to implement in your studio and grow your preschool program.
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