Thread: Anyone Teaching Kids?

Hi Ladies, I'm doing a summer program teaching girls in grades 1-4 Zumba (I know ). However, being that it is one of the "rhythms" taught, and being a BD I'd like to teach them BD. I meet with them daily.

In addition, in the fall I will be teaching a weekly BD class to children, not sure of the ages.

I know it's all about the music esp in Zumba, so the girls right now seem to like Fuego (Cumbia) and Jai Ho (I put together some BD and American moves), salsa they were ok with but they are having a hard time with merengue and BD.

Does anyone have any advice, tips, suggestions?

What BD moves would you teach kids?

I'm so proud of you. I think you would make a great teacher.
I've done workshops and birthday with young girls (I did a party with 11- 7 year old). The girls really like learning veil work. They said they felt like beautiful princesses. They also like doing upper body movements like snake arms. One girl said that learning to control her upper body thru belly dance helped out with ballet which she was already taking.

I will this-I did not use your traditional belly dance music. In my workshops, they've found it difficult to work with the rhythms

I have been teaching my 7 year old to dance for a couple years now and I started with simple moves like mayas and snake arms. We do a lot of hip accents and circles. She actually has great abdominal control so we are starting to work on rolls and pops. Camels actually came really easy but its getting them controlled that is harder. No booty throwing at the end lol. I second the veil work and even zils (slow easy rhythms). Abby loves working with the props. So we learn movements and drill and then work with 1 prop each session. She also loves choreography for shows but will improv once she gets warmed up. When you start with the dance younger, you can teach them the things that you wish you would have learned first like improv and creating your own combinations. It helps when they grow in the dance, they have less hang ups about performing and improv than someone who started later in life:)

Good for you! I founded Happy Hips Youth Dance Troupe in NC 5 years ago. It is still going very strong, run by my twin sister. I have since moved to MN and have a branch of Happy Hips here.

I have found nothing so rewarding as teaching children. I have students from 3yo to teenagers (who ultimately funnel into the adult classes). I have so many ideas and suggestions that they will not all fit into this post and I am happy to share with you.

The kids who I teach really like to create their own dances. They began improvising very early on and performing at family friendly haflas. Basically, I gave them the fundamentals and they used their own creativity to do the rest. They even began choreographing (with my help) about a year into studying with me. In NC, the Happy Hips Troupe directed by my sister just performed at a major community festival while balancing stuffed animals on their heads. It was a crowd pleaser.

The other thing that I do regularly is design the class organically. For instance, I teach in short segments 15-20 min and then we play a belly dance game. We play, "Sadiya Says", Freeze Dance Belly Dance, Belly Dance Charades, just to name a few. My youngest dancers 3-5yo really like to do animal belly dance. We pretend like we are a bunny rabbit and think of how a bunny rabbit would belly dance.

If you would like other ideas I am happy to discuss further with you. I think it is so important to take our art to children. The children I work with are absolutely transformed by the experience.

I don't know the protocol for this, but you can contact me through e-mail at info@RochesterInternationalDance.com.

Good luck and have fun!

Originally Posted by AmiraStar

..... I second the veil work and even zils.....

no experience with teaching kids (except at getting some up to dance at a party. i had them imitate different animals, the undulation was a dolphin that stands out of the water and swims backwards) but i had to post these because they are SO CUTE! Mini Zills for the Small Hands

Happy for you . I used to be an English teacher , it's a great jop . You'll feel wonderful when the students love you and the work you have've done for them .



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I've found with kids, sticking with the basic moves always works well. My kids loved a bellydance version of Simon Says (they loved calling it Cleopatra Says). However, the big hits were improv and freeze dance. They had to strike a pose every time the music stopped instead of just freezing. Their favorite move to work on was shimmies. They enjoyed mirroring exercises too.

My class was a group of kids mostly from 7-11, and we had one boy. They came from a variety of backgrounds, but only one of them was a dancer in any other style. Because of that, I found a looser, more fun and less technique heavy class worked well for them. However, if the class was filled with kids who were already dancers, I think they would have felt more comfortable with more structured routine.