Dancing Queen

For as long as we can remember, Mikaela has loved to dance.  Now that she's three, we decided to enroll her in a preschool dance class at the city rec center.  We chose a very low key class where outfits are not required to help us get a feel for her enjoyment of it.  No sense sinking a bunch of money into something she won't enjoy.  The teacher does a fantastic job engaging the kiddos in to music, rhythm, and dance, teaching them basic ballet in the process (first position, etc).  She had a great time.

The pictures aren't great because the camera battery died and my phone didn't do as well, but here you go.  We plan to keep her in it in the fall so we'll have better pictures in the future.

The first of class was stretching on mats using stuffed animals and scarves to help.  She was great about watching the teacher and following as best she could.  At one point she exclaimed, "You're a good teacher!"

After warm-up they moved to the bar for some basic ballet moves.  She wasn't always doing it right, but she was very attentive and mimicked what she saw as best she could.

After bar work, they did some free style movement with scarves and later ribbons, as well as some structured movement.

The last of the class was rhythm work with  instruments.  If she is really paying attention, her rhythm is spot on.  I'm looking forward to the fall and watching her learn more and more.