Creative Ideas For Your Dance Lessons
Mar 27, 2023
So, I have been doing some research and was looking for some new ideas for my PE Dance class since a lot of my kids have to take dance and don’t really want to take dance. So I am doing some units using props which I think are absolutely so much fun!
My brain is just non stop with ideas and now I can’t turn off those thoughts and can’t sleep! I am really enjoying teaching dance at the elementary school because I can not only teach dance but use other disciplines with dance which makes it so much for fun I think.
The past two weeks we have been doing a flashlight unit. We start off using flashlights during our warm-up and stretch time of course with the lights off. We have a quick water break and then I have videos prepared on the smart board with each have different elements. One video was from a movie where they dance with flashlights, another video incorporated shadow dancing, another LED dance routine, and then a morse code video. So with morse code I ended up using the flashlight for morse code and they had to guess the letters I was doing and then turned it into a game. Whoever could get the word right would win a prize. They really got excited about it and wanted to keep guessing more words! We ended class with Freeze dance but instead of pausing the music I used my flashlight. So when the flashlight is on a student they have to freeze. Once the light is not on the student anymore they can move. They had a blast and I played with all grades! Another activity we did was make our own shadow hand puppets and or shapes with our flashlights. I also have a special book that when you flash the light behind the page, images appear. When there is no light it disappears. And we also did story time where we made up our own story. We sat in a circle or did this activity while the kids were in line waiting for their teacher. I started the story and then when I flashed the light on a student they had to add to the story. Big hit with all the ages!
Now this week I am starting a lummi or fitness stick unit. I have been putting the warm-ups together and man, it’s a great workout. And it’s fun. I know I will have some students that will not want to do it. But I mean, I wish I got to do these dance classes when I grew up!!! I do have some games I want to play using the sticks and I have some videos of different dancing videos using sticks. I will be showing some videos that use sticks whether it’s a majorette using a flags, baton twirler, drum-line performance, tinikling dance of the Philippines and more.
Then I will be moving on to a hula hoop unit. And then it’s almost time for our summer break! I really do enjoy props and turning my lessons into a hands on multi-disciplinary lesson. We don’t always get to do that in a regular dance studio class.
I hope I got some of your creative juices flowing or have motivated you to get creative with your lessons. Thanks for listening everyone and have an awesome week!
