Tutu Tuesday!!!

Okay it's time to dance. Sorry I should have written this last night instead of tonight. Start out with the warm up. (Check with the previous blog to find the warm up and the different fun dances)

Move on to a fun dance.

Now it's time for a new technique portion.

The activity this week do something with scissors. Cut out some pictures from magazines and make a collage.

We are going to learn from the way scissors slide in and out and notice how strait the blades are. Okay imagine your legs are the blades of scissors. You need to keep your legs strait for this entire technique portion. First we will learn about TENDUS. A tendu is when you are standing up tall and your legs are strait and together. Now slide one leg out away from you and point your toe. In a tendu your toe never leaves the floor. You are also sliding your foot on the floor as your leg gos out and comes back in. Next is a DEGAGE. This is just like a tendu except with this one you can lift your leg up off of the floor a few inches. Make sure to point those toes. Lastly is a GRAND BATTEMENT. This is your biggest kick you have. Just make sure you stand up strait, your legs are don't bend and your toes point.

Picture of Tendu

Picture of Degage

Picture of Grand Battement

Now to apply...

Let's try opening our scissor legs little (tendu), medium (degage), and big (grand battement). Try first front with one leg Little, Medium, and Big! now the other leg front, little, medium, and big. You can also try these moves out to the side of you. Also try them to the back, little medium and big. Make sure you do both legs. You may have noticed it's hard to stand up strait and not fall over. Ballerinas use a something called a barre to help them not to fall. You have something better.... your Mommy. Hold hands as you try these moves out. It makes it just that much more fun.

One more way to try out these steps. Try doing tendus all the way across the floor. After a tendu take a step and tendu the other leg and take a step, so on and so on. Try it with the Degage and the Grand Battement too.

I hope you had fun today.

Finnish up class with a free dance.

If you wouldn't mined, please leave your comments. I want to know if these lessons are making sense at all for you moms and kids. I also want to know how to make them better. I'm totally open for suggestions. Also could you tell me which lessens work best with certain age groups. For example if you have a three year old and one lessen they loved but another it was way over there head I would like to know.

Thanks so much.

Tutu Tuesday!!!!

This position is fifth low and it should be at the end of the picture list. Sorry.

This is First position.

Second position

Third position

Forth position

Fifth high This is first again. I'm really not so good at this bogging thing. (ps. I'm so embarrassed to put myself on these pictures. I'm going from now on draw sketches for you or take pictures of some of the cute girls I teach.)

IT'S HERE!!! Our very first Tutu Tuesday! Are you ready Mommies? Are you ready Kids? Okay let's go....

Warm Ups
This is to get you moving!!! Start with some fun music. Now let’s do some bend and strait. This is called a plea. You bend your knees and straiten them again. Do 8 in a row. Now stretch up to the sky and down to your tows up to the sky and down to your tows. Start over with 8 pleas and two stretches. Now run I place together. Holding hands would be fun. Try going one way in a circle and then the other way. Do some jumps up and down. How about 8 then 8 marches in place or around the room. Again, 8 jumps then 8 marches. How about one more time with everything to make sure you are nice and warm.

Fun Dance
This is a very important part of dancing class. It’s time to have fun and to use our imaginations. I have 4 different fun dances. Do one or all.
1. Freeze dance- This is a game that needs two people. Good thing this is a mommy and me class. Take turns pausing the music. When the music is playing you can dance around how ever you want but when the music stops you need to freeze in the position you where in when the music stopped. Stop and play for a whole song.
2. Follow the Leader-This game is fun and pretty self explanatory. Take turns being the leader. Mommy’s have fun with this. Your kids will get a kick out of you doing what they do.
3. Words- This game requires some creativity on both parts. Mommy you are in charge of coming up with some fun creative words. Nouns, verbs, and adverbs work best. Okay play some music and mommy you say a word and kids get to dance out that word. Mommy you can dance too. Example for words: Nouns- Baby, tiger, fancy girl, bug. Verbs- jump, kick, run…. Adverbs- happily, excitedly…. Adjectives- big, small, round, strait…. Also as you start to learn different dance vocabulary use those words too. A fun thing to do also is to write your words down on little strips of paper and put them in a bowl. Then draw out words throughout the dance. This way you only have to be creative once, and you can add too it every time you have another idea.
4. Imagination dance- read, tell, or make up a story, put music on and as you tell the story let your child dance/act out the story. It can be silly and allot of fun.
Try to make all of these fun dances last for a whole song.

Technique
This is the part of our dance class where we will learn real dance moves, and the proper way to do them. Also we will have lessons on dance theory (such as rhythm and counting). These are the things that change every dance class. I will be providing new ones all the time. I’ve also pared each technique class with an activity to help understand the technique better.
Now that we’ve warmed up, and had a fun dance, let’s learn some technique.
Arms and Spinning:
Activity- Make instant pudding together. Let your child hold the bowl, and do some of the mixing with the spoon.
Technique-
Arms- (These are the pictures above) Think about holding a big bowl in front of you. Use both of your arms to make the imaginary bowl shape. This is (in ballet) 1st position. Now imagine your bowl grew so big you can only hold it by taking your arms out to the sides of you. Still keep them round though. This is 2nd position. 3rd position is when one arm in out to the side like in 2nd and the other is rounded in like in first. But it can be round above your head too. 4th position is when both arms are rounded like in 1st but they are never at the same level so one can be above the head and the other can be in front of your body. 5th high is when your arms form a circle with your hands above your head. It’s like making a picture frame for your face with your arms. And 5th low is the same arm position but your hands are dropped just under your belly button.
Spinning- Think about when you make pudding. You can mix the pudding by making big slow circle or fast little crazy ones. Spinning is such a fun part of dancing. Try slow controlled turns, and crazy fast ones. (Make sure there is a big enough space to fall down and not get hurt.) In dancing there is something called spotting. This is a trick dancers use to turn and not get too dizzy and to know where they are going on a stage or in a class room. It takes years of practice to be good but go ahead and give it a try. It’s when you look at something on one wall as you turn try to keep your eyes on that spot until you can’t any longer and flip your head around and find it again with your eyes.

A game you could play is an Arm test. Call out a position and try to give the position that goes with that number. Ex: "First position" and how remembers what that one was? Oh ya that's the one I so cool like pictured twice above.

Free Dance- to finish up our mommy and me dance class let’s have a free dance. Play a song and do whatever you want. Make sure though you dance and play together. Tell your child what they are doing well. And finish with a beautiful pose.

Well done! I hope you had fun. See you next week in class.

This is how this is going to work.

Hello again. With some help from my sister I've decided to make Tuesdays our lesson days. They will be called tutu Tuesdays. I'm so excited! Every Tuesday I will have a new technique section for a mommy and me dance class. Then throughout the week I'll post other things, or nothing if I'm not feeling it that week. For sure Tuesday is dance day! I like to structure my classes in four parts: first is warm up, second being a fun dance, third the technique portion, and last is an imagination dance. I hope this will last about a half hour to forty-five min. Pretty much the warm ups, fun dances and imagination dance sections, I will give you ideas and ways to do them but they don't change every week. The technique portions do change every week. I also encourage creativity with the warm ups, fun dances, and imagination dances. Once you feel comfortable with the idea and the goal of my suggestions try some of your own. Please have fun with your child. Fallow there cues. If they are not having fun try changing the music, or try a dancing game, or try stopping and trying again latter, or maybe your child just doesn't like to dance. That this Mommy and Me Dancing is just not their thing. But I do think most kids will love moving to the music with Mommy!

Who am I....

Hello my name is Aubrey, and I'm a Mommy!! I love this job. It's the hardest job I've ever had. My own Mommy was the best Mom in the world, and I want to be as good of a Mom that she was for me for my family. Aside from love, and attention, and a belief in God; the most treasured gift my Mom gave me was DANCE. My Mom was my dance teacher for the first few years of my life and she's always been my hardest but best critic in my own dancing. She gave me a love for dancing and moving and for music that has literally shaped my life. I danced with her all through my elementary years. I then moved on to different studios and eventually into collage dance programs and teams. I've taught dance myself since high school. I just can't get enough of it. I'm now only beginning to learn the joy of teaching. Now that I have my own little one it's so fun to see her learn and grow. She doesn't have to be a dancer. Goodness, I hope she will become anything she would like to become. But I would like to show her a little bit of what I love to do so much. I taught my first Mommy and Me class two years ago and I fell in love with the idea. Having a special time for Mom and Child to play and imagine and dance! It was so special to see Mom's and children play together. That's why I'm starting this blog (with the encouragement from my husband and my sister). I want to share that with any Mom and child that want to play along with me. My goals are really to provide an activity for Mommy and child to do together, to give proper beginning dance instruction, to encourage imagination and movement, and to hopefully help some little one that is allot like me, to learn to love dance.