PitterPatterFeet

Excellent teaching skills were demonstrated in the movie ” The Karate Kid” starring Jaden Smith, Jackie Chen and Taraji Henson. Teaching and parenting are things that people usually do from a place of love.  Jackie Chen’s character(Mr. Hong) tells Jaden Smith’s character (Dre Parker) that there are no bad students only bad teachers.

I understand where Chen was coming from. As teachers and parents it is our job to find out and figure out what it takes to reach our children. Read more »

You may ask what does Verizon Wireless and being loyal to them have to do with teaching children? What does money have to do with it you ask? Plenty!

I just spoke with a wonderful customer service representative named Juan from Verizon Wireless. I explained to him Read more »

This Halloween was extra special as I ran into one of my old students. At such a young age, she is around 3 years old now, I was very surprised that she remembered me. What a wonderful surprise when I opened the door after hearing Trick or Treat Read more »

I had an interesting experience the other day. I was teaching at a school that I have been a consultant for since the early 90s. This school highly values education and appreciates and embraces different techniques to accomplish that goal. I was teaching their 2 1/2 to 3 year old group.

I had given them some choreography to a song from Read more »

Today I had the most wonderful experience after one of my classess. One of my students a 4 year old boy latched on to my leg and proclaimed “I’m going with you!” Sorry J I have to go to another school you have to stay here at your school. Your parents will be looking for you at the end of the day I told him. That didn’t move him one bit still attached to my leg he persisted.” I don’t want to let go. I want to go with you!”

I looked at him fondly remembering all the times I had to sit him in the audience to watch the class until he would change his behavior. Our biggest challenge was keeping him from hitting the other students and following directions. He felt that at any time during the class he could do whatever he wanted to do. It did not make a difference how many times that I would explain that it was time to do another activity or that dance class was over he would throw the fit of life. Read more »

People are really amazed when I tell them I teach Creative Movement and Dance to children from infancy to school age. What can you do with them so young they say? I can understand why they would say that looking at it from someone that doesn’t have the opportunity to be around children all day and work with them.

Hopefully after seeing  the movie “Babies” they will have a better understanding of some of the   things that all babies do and go through no matter the region or culture. This movie chronicles 4 babies from birth to when they take their first step. There is no dialogue at all, just the sounds of the babies and whatever is in their environment at the time.

In the movie we see that babies are great imitators.  Because babies are such great imitators we have an amazing window of opportunity  for future learning and growth and development. We can talk to them    as we would normally talk to  anyone else. This helps babies to learn language faster and begin speaking  earlier.

Babies can learn about their environment, their bodies and how  different body parts work and what these body parts can do. They can learn about what’s happening to them at certain times and learn about cause and effect. For instance you can explain, now it is time to eat we are going to have some peas and carrots and pears yum. Pears are outside  on a tree, remember when I showed you a tree when we were at the park.

Babies are always learning even though they cannot speak yet, they are still learning a  lot.  Their brains are building neuropathways with every experience. These neuropathways are the building blocks for future learning . They lay the groundwork so that when they experience similiar experiences in the future the foundation is already laid.

It is important to take advantage of this opportunity because children go through a pruning of brain cells that are not used. Use it or lose it definitely applies here. The prime time for this opportunity is from birth to 2 years of age. The brain is still growing and developing after this age, it’s just that from 0-2 is the best time.

Lastly children naturally dance when they hear a rhythm. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just clapping and singing can provide good music and get a baby moving. This is a fun form of expression for a baby and children in general. something that they love to do.

So remember babies can do a lot more than you think they can. I’d love to hear about what your babies are doing. Please feel free to post your comments and experiences on this blog.

In my last post I mentioned a memory game that had the students remember what they saw and to visualize it.  This game is a great game with helping children that have different learning styles other than visual to learn to visualize.  You can expand the game to help other types of learners.

For kinesthetic learners you can allow each student to go up and touch the object. Use all their senses to explore the objects. They can stroke it, squeeze it or smell it, shake it to see if it makes any noises. You can take it a step further and have them tell you what sounds does the object make or what does it do.

For example, if one of the objects is a dog. They can tell you what sound does the dog make. Have they ever seen a dog in real life. Where was the dog, what was it doing.  Allow the other children to add their comments. Asking the children what sound does the object make also includes the auditory learner. Learning in this way makes learning more memorable and relevant because the children have a way of associating it with their lives.

One last way  to help with memory is having children duplicate a beat that you make up. Counting the beats is very helpful and makes it easier to remember. You can also substitute singing in for the beats which involves more of the children’s senses. It helps to put the beats in counts of 3 and repeat that pattern to allow the children to master it.

You can vary the rate of speed, place pauses in between each beat. Clap the beat. Stomp the beat. Beat the beat on an object or the floor or on different body parts. Let your imagination and the imagination of the children soar. Be sure to ask them and get their input. Having them take ownership and be a part of the process will ensure their cooperation and input and makes it a lot more fun for them. This also  alleviates you having to come up with everything and allows the children to utilize their creativity.

These exercises work best for 4 and 5 year old. The beat exercise you can do for younger children from 2 1/2 and up. Try them and see and let me know how they turned out. I look forward to hearing from you.

There are not many regrets that I can think of that I have with regards to teaching children dance but there is one big one. This big regret is that there is not enough of me to go around and sometimes because of time and money restraints I have to teach larger than usual classes. These classes can be anywhere from 30 children and up.

You see my ideal class is between 8-12 students, 15 at maximum but not less than 8. In a class of this size I can give more individualized attention and corrections and have a lot more flexibility and spontaneity in the class. My favorite thing is that I can incorporate a lot of problem solving  and creative thinking games in the class.  In smaller classes I Read more »

I still feel the thrill of teaching dance to children that I felt back in 1986 when I saw this little cutie pie Dana walk by in a little lion costume. My own class had not started yet as I had gotten to the school early. The studio was all a buzz with all these little girls running around the studio in their costume for the  upcoming recital.

I felt transported to a fairy tale land. My heart was racing I was so excited they all just looked so adorable and I wanted to jump in on the fun.  Because every one else was so excited and bouncing all around, Dana caught my attention.

I walked over to her and sat down next to her. Hello I said. She did not look happy at all. What’s the matter I said? Read more »

One of the greatest gifts  you can give to your child is the gift of dance.  Being a dance teacher and choreographer I advocate both dance as a discipline to learn in a structured class as well as experiencing music and movement for its own sake.  In dance classes at Pitter Patter Feet the two methods go hand in hand.

In my dance classes there are times when we are doing  structured activites where it is important to move as a unit with everyone doing and learning the same thing and times when the children are allowed their own interpretation and expression of what they are learning.

This can be  done in several ways  Read more »