Teach Beginning Ballet Classes

Teaching beginning ballet is a fascinating experience. Most beginning ballet classes start with children ages 3-5. During this initial training, their sporadic play and uninhibited movements start to take shape in to the beautiful art form of ballet. This is a guide to a beginning ballet class.

Difficulty:

Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Start with the students seated in a circle on the floor. Warm up their toes by pointing them up and down. While still seated, have students reach out and touch their toes, lay all the way back stretched out then sit back up with their arms over their heads. Finish the warm up with each student skipping around the circle.

2. Arrange students at the barre. Do basic barre exercises in first and second position. Have students demi plie twice and grande plie once. Repeat twice then switch sides. Do with tendus, two tendus with a grand battement.

3. Assign students a special place in the center of the floor. Stars or other painted symbols in two staggered rows work well. To help them remember their places, have the students run away from their stars and then return when you clap your hands twice. This is a great classroom management technique, you will not have to raise your voice above theirs to get almost immediate attention and order.

4. Make-believe movement. Start with the students standing on their stars. Give them an animal or movement to act out around the room. These could be things like birds, dogs, cats, bunny rabbits, ice skaters and princesses. Clap to have them return to their stars in between each movement.

5. Teach the basics. In the center, have student stand on their symbols. Good basic moves to begin with are step pekay, chasse, pointing and tapping their toes, soutenou turns and changing places. You can create a simple dance using these moves. Repetition of the moves in the same sequence will help the students remember them.

6. Use children's songs to teach movement. Some songs have movement directions in them, like the Hokey Pokey. Other children's songs are great for "free dancing". Give the children scarves or handkerchiefs and let them do their own dance to the music while floating the scarves around in the air. Balloons are also great for this time.

7. End with a curtsy. Return the students to the symbols in the center and prepare to say goodbye with a curtsy. After a few classes, have all of the students come to the front of the room and let each student take her own curtsy individually to the class.