Creative Dance

Hannah, from Smart Moves Creative Dance School, provides interested families with a fun, engaging and developmentally appropriate dance education programme that emphasises children’s creativity.

Participation in such a programme has many benefits for young children. Children love to move. Crawling, climbing, skipping and jumping however, is not only fun, it is essential for learning. Research shows the specific importance of movement for the healthy brain development of children from birth to 5 years old. Traditional teacher-centred dance classes however, are often too rigid. This can cause children to lose interest since they are not able to exercise their own creativity. Creative dance allows this freedom that traditional dance classes tend to stifle. It develops both the physical aspects of dance technique, such as co-ordination, strength, flexibility and control, as well as fostering children’s own creativity and self-expression through movement. Creative dance therefore, is an excellent means of promoting children’s active movement whilst at the same time enabling them to express themselves freely and naturally.

The programme that will be offered is based upon a curriculum of brain-compatible dance classes devised by Anne Green Gilbert, artistic director of the Creative Dance Centre in Seattle. It is founded upon an understanding of current research on how the brain learns, so as to ensure that learning dance, developing skills and technique, and creating is both fun and beneficial.

If you are interested you need to enrol for this on a termly basis. Please contact the centre for information on availability, cost and how to enrol.

Six Point Dance Lesson Plan

1.    Warming up
All classes begin with the ‘Brain Dance’, a set of sequential brain gym exercises based on the fundamental movement patterns that a baby goes through in their first year of life. These movement patterns wire the central nervous system, laying the foundation for appropriate behaviour and attention, eye convergence necessary for reading, sensory-motor development and more. Each time we pass through these movements the brain is reorganised and mind and body become increasingly integrated. By performing these exercises children become focused, energized and ready to learn.

2.    Exploring a dance concept    
The lesson will then move on to the exploration of a dance related concept. Concepts include size, direction, speed, weight and rhythm. The whole lesson is then based on this concept, rather than using a rote, steps-only approach, so as to be more meaningful and beneficial for the children. Each week, one of 15 dance concepts will be explored by the children as they are prompted to think about different ways of moving, thus increasing both their cognitive and motor skills. Props will be used as a visual and tactile extension of the concept. They increase children’s attention and promote increased learning.

3.    Exploring instruments and rhythm
Children will then be given the opportunity to explore various instruments such as drums, bells and tambourines and then use these creatively, integrating the lesson concept.

4.    Developing dance skills
Each week the children will learn and practice different locomotor and nonlocomotor skills and movement combinations whilst integrating the lesson concept. They will practice turns using ribbons and scarves and create different obstacle courses using various objects and props to promote motor development and coordination.

5.    Creating/Improvisation
Children will be given the opportunity to improvise with the help of props and a wide variety of music styles.

6.    Cooling down
Lastly, a fun action song will be performed or a parachute used to promote group dynamics. Class finishes with a ‘goodbye dance’.

Children are welcome to wear dance clothing for the class, however this is not essential. No shoes.

An open class will be held on the final class of the term for parents to come and view progress! We will inform you closer to the time when this will be. Lots of photos will be taken during dance classes for you to view during the term.

Please contact the centre for further information.