I use pre ballet lesson plans for my baby classes, and this is one of my favorites. The children often ask to do this story. It is designed more for older children of about 5 years, but it can be simplified for 3 and 4-year-olds. Children love stories, and this is a great way for them to learn ballet steps, but while acting out a story or going on an adventure.
Pre Ballet Lesson Plans
I have various pre ballet lesson plans that I use to teach my tiny tots. I have the music labeled with the story on my iPod for ease of use, and to remind me of the different stories. It helps to have your music organized in order so you don’t waste time jumping around, thus losing the focus of the children.
Snow Mountain Adventure
We start our adventure by getting dressed warmly to go up into the freezing mountains. We even have a song that we sing while we are putting on our hat, scarf, and boots.
Next, we climb into our car, which we do by putting our legs in front of our bodies bent with feet flat and a straight back.
We drive on a dirt road, so we bounce up and down, lean back (to work the tummy) as we go uphill, and forward as we come down. We also lean to the side when we turn corners and try not to fall out of the car. Try to get the children to glue their knees together – not so easy!
We look into the glove compartment and get our airplane tickets so that we can fly up the magic mountain.
We then climb into the airplane and fly to the top of the magic mountain. I usually take the best (or worst) behaved child so far that day, and make him or her the pilot, and the others follow the leader. They run on the tips of their toes with their arms out to the side. Tell them not to ‘bend their wings’ or the plane will crash.
We land the plane nicely by spinning on our toes and ending with our feet together.
When we get out of the plane at the top of the mountain, we have to walk in very deep snow up to our waists, so we have to lift our knees really high. This is a good way to practice for marches or skips. To make it fun I let them lift their knees using their hands first, as their boots are getting stuck in the snow.
We then come across a frozen lake. We decide before we go ice skating, we will walk across the lake on our bottoms to see if the ice is thick enough to hold our weight. Let the children sit with their legs out straight in front of them and walk both forwards and backward on their butts without touching the ice with their fingers.
This exercise is excellent for developing their stomach and core muscles, but the older children will manage this far easier than the younger ones.
As the lake is hard enough, we put on our ice skates and go skating on the lake. This teaches the children the basics of a chasse in ballet. Sometimes we even twirl on one leg.
We then get to a forest on the other side of the lake, and I lay down bean bags, which represent trees, and we follow the leader and skip through the trees.
We come across some ponies tied to a tree and go for a pony ride. Here we use skipping ropes around the ponies waists and the children take turns in being ponies and riders. Some days we do pony gallops, some pony trots and other days just pony walks, depending on the ability of the children in the class.
We then run and leap over the river. I use two skipping ropes laid out on the floor like railway tracks for this one.
We hear somebody calling for help, and discover a cave with a big rock blocking the entrance. We try to push the rock, but it is too heavy. Then we see a piece of paper sticking out the side which says “This is a magic rock. In order to make it move you need to do the following: Stand and balance on one leg, hop on one leg, sit down and stand up without using your hands on the floor.”
After doing what the paper says the rock moves away and all the fairies that were trapped inside the cave come flying out. They thank the children for saving them and give them a set of wings as a gift.
The children then fly home with their new set of fairy wings.
Please comment on your experiences if you manage to try this out in your class. I would love to know how it went.
