Kids LOVE to play pretend. They especially love to pretend to be animals. Which makes animal imagery a great tool in dance class to get them engaged and participating with enthusiasm. But sometimes you add an animal activity to your lesson plan, imagining your students transforming into light, graceful butterflies and strong, fierce tigers only to have this happen:
Teacher: Let’s pretend to be lions
*Dancers start running*
Teacher: And now let’s be butterflies
*Dancers start running while occasionally flapping their arms*
Teacher: How about bunnies?
*Dancers do two hops and then start running.*
Teacher: I know - SNAKES!
*Dancers get on their bellies and slither for a moment and then get up and start running.*
Teacher: *lies down in a defeated puddle on the floor while students run around them in circles.*
I’m joking on that last one… sort of.
Most young kids see the big open dance studio and a switch flips in their brain filling them with a need to be in as much of that space as possible, as quickly as possible. They also haven’t always thought much about the nuance of movements of different animals. Which can make using these activities so frustrating. Because you WANT to connect with them, and tapping into their imaginations is a great way to do that. But you also want them to learn how to move their bodies in NEW ways.
So how do you keep the animal activities in your curriculum while also helping those tiny dancers to grow their dance skills?
Here’s my suggestion for making those animal activities (or any imaginative dance game) meaningful AND magical:
Give more information.
Use as many movement-related descriptive words as possible.
You can say skills words (jump, float, twirl).
Or words describing the quality of movement (soft, fierce, graceful, powerful).
But my absolute favorite way to give more context to dancers of any age is to use fundamental dance concepts.*
Here’s why I love using them:
Many of the dance concepts use words and ideas that kids already understand.
Using them in dance class helps them deepen their understanding of their own bodies.
When a child hears a dance concept and then applies it to their own movement, they are developing their own creativity instead of relying on the creative ideas of someone else. This can be a huge self esteem boost!
The dance concepts relate to movement AND to experiences we have in our daily lives. Developing familiarity with the concepts in class makes it possible for dancers to start making those connections outside of class as well.
Let’s look at how this works with an animal exploration while focusing on the dance concept of size:
“It’s time to be a horse! A horse stands tall and strong. Sometimes a horse trots with small steps, keeping their hooves close to the ground. Prancing along delicately and daintily, knees and ankles moving up and down, flicking as they move forward. Sometimes a horse gallops with strength and determination, taking big strides across the field. Their legs keep a steady rhythm like a heartbeat. As they gallop, one leg stretches far away from the other. While the horse’s legs move, it’s upper body holds steady.”
As you can see, there is so much packed into this one simple animal exploration:
It develops skills: trot/prance, gallop
It encourages the refinement of movement: delicate, dainty, strong, steady.
And it touches on multiple dance concepts: size, direction, rhythm.
Best of all, it significantly helps your classroom management because you are giving the dancers enough structure to feel like they know what to do, and enough freedom for them to feel in control of their experience in the classroom. More creative dancing. Less running. Win-win.
* If you’re not familiar with the foundational dance concepts, I highly recommend Anne Green Gilbert’s book Creative Dance for all Ages.