The Early Childhood Project
The Arts of the Dance Centre's Early Childhood Program
The early childhood program at The Arts of the Dance Centre is a foundation for learning dance. Children are taught an introduction to ballet, tap and tumbling. The program is designed to give children a chance to explore movement and creativity, improve coordination and flexibilty, and master basic locomotor skills. At the same time, dance is treated as a discipline, so children will learn the fundamentals of classroom etiquette.
Each class follows the same basic structure, with content based on developmental skills for the appropriate age. Teachers at the studio follow the Tempo, Level, Energy and Shapes program for each month. This syllabus, designed by Lisa Garick Michaels, is based on years of research about children's physical and mental learning abilities.
Each month the class has a new goal. For example, September's goal was classroom structure, October's goal was musical awareness and November's goal was relationships with others. Activitties and dance steps in the classroom are based on these oals.
The children also have an opportunity to improvise and increase creativity with a different "free dance" each month. For example, in one class, children were given leaves and pretended to be trees. In another classroom, children learned about tempo and were encouraged to dance any way they wanted to the music.