Move. Create. Educate.
By maria, on May 10th, 2012%
Every week I do an animal dance with my 2-3 year old students. They love it, and every week they come up with a new animal to dance about. Every once in a while someone comes up with a really awesome one like antelope (?), or penguin. One day last week a little boy called out “bumble bee!” We buzzed a around for a while, but I remembered a poem I had heard before about a bee so I looked it up and brought it back this week. It’s so fun to say and create a dance with! Try it out… Continue reading Bumble Bee Dance
By maria, on May 2nd, 2012%
Read It. Move It. Share It. is a collaboration with Kerry from Picture Books and Pirouettes. Once a month Kerry recommends a book for me to use in my creative movement classes. Then I write a post on what I did with the book and how I used it with my students in hopes of giving you some new ideas to use in your classes! Here is the April book. Enjoy!
My students love rain! They love doing rain dances and telling me about the princesses (ack!  on their umbrellas. Since I started this blog I have shared many rain dances so I knew with this book I had to do something different and really awesome! When I first got the book I read through it and noticed all of the noises the rain makes. That was it! A dance about what the rain sounds like! Here’s what we did: Continue reading KER-SPLAT! Who Likes The Sound Of Rain?
By maria, on May 1st, 2012%
I can’t believe I didn’t share my latest Dance Advantage post with you yet. Continue reading Decorating Your Dance Room
By maria, on March 29th, 2012%
Leap on over to read my post at Dance Advantage today: Continue reading Facing Burnout? Try These!
By maria, on March 28th, 2012%
Read It. Move It. Share It. is a collaboration with Kerry from Picture Books and Pirouettes. Once a month Kerry recommends a book for me to use in my creative movement classes. Then I write a post on what I did with the book and how I used it with my students in hopes of giving you some new ideas to use in your classes! Here is the March book. Enjoy!
Last Saturday I was feeling really ambitious. I was in a room with full of 20 4 year olds (2x!) and for some reason my assistant never showed up. I had this book in my bag, so thinking quick on my feet I had the idea of doing partner dances. We have been doing partner and group shapes already, so surely it would be wonderful. Not the case. But we did have fun! Here are some ideas: Continue reading Grab A Partner For The Barnyard Dance!
By maria, on February 29th, 2012%
Read It. Move It. Share It. is a collaboration with Kerry from Picture Books and Pirouettes. Once a month Kerry recommends a book for me to use in my creative movement classes. Then I write a post on what I did with the book and how I used it with my students in hopes of giving you some new ideas to use in your classes! Here is the February book. Enjoy!
I love the Hokey Pokey! It’s one of my favorite dances to do with my littles. It seems like all ages love this song and dance and it never gets old. This month Kerry recommended The Croaky Pokey and I was so excited to try it out. I tried this book with my grown-up and me classes which are ages 2-3. They loved it! Here’s what we did! Continue reading The Croaky Pokey + The Hokey Hippo
By maria, on February 28th, 2012%
By maria, on February 22nd, 2012%
This month’s Dance Advantage Circle Time topic is The (Dance) Things I Love. I have been thinking about what to write in this post all month! I kept asking my husband, I need to think about some dance things that I love. He was like “ummm, dance is your life, you surely can think of something.”  Sooo here it is… Continue reading These Are A Few Of The Things That I Love…
By maria, on February 21st, 2012%
 On Saturday almost every one of my students told me that they were flying to a place this week for vacation. Then I promptly said “If I get really small, can I crawl into your suitcase?” They giggled and smiled! I then had the idea that if they are all flying somewhere we should do an airplane dance! Here are some ideas if you find yourself in the same boat (?)… plane. Continue reading Airplane Dance
By maria, on February 9th, 2012%
I usually don’t post ideas until I try them with my dancers, but I am going to try this dance on Saturday and thought maybe you might want to plan to do it in your classes for V day. I had this idea on the train yesterday and I think it’s going to be so fun! For valentines day last year I made these. Here is my idea for designing a whole class with X’s and O’s. Continue reading X’s and O’s: 3 Ideas for Incorporating XOXO Into Class
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About 
Maria Hanley is an independent early childhood dance educator in New York City.
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