If you are just beginning to teach young children, you may want to keep in mind what I like to call the “two-minute rule”. Little ones tend to bore easily, so besides presenting an energetic demeanor, you can also make sure they pay attention by limiting each exercise to about two minutes or so (give or take).

This means some advance planning. If you have a 40 minute class and teach in two-minute segments, that means a lot of different activities! Still, you can use the same ones over again each week–just make sure that you add a new one from time to time to change things up a little bit.

If you are stuck for new ideas, take a peek at this piece I wrote some time ago for Dance Teacher on how to use games to teach a dance class for young students. It should give you some tools you can use.

Anyone else have any tips? Feel free to share them here–it’s nice when we can all help each other out!