Belly Dance Forums - View Single Post - Help on a lesson for 6 to 12 year old girls and boys

Helena Bellydancer · 07-02-2008, 11:43 AM

Hi Meg

Are you performing for them, teaching them, or both?

I recently did a 50 min workshop for a primary school for both girls and boys towards the lower end of the range you will be working with. I taught some very young kids too and they all just joined in - but with the 6-8 group the boys really baulked at doing dance as they are VERY sensitive at that age about not being seen to do "girly" things (and vice versa for girls). I suggest you make it clear right at the very start that both boys and girls dance like this in the Middle East!

I started by giving a very short background of the dance. Kids have short attention spans so I made this a bit more interactive (they loved repeating back the Arabic for dance and telling me what they knew about Egypt etc). We then moved onto learning some basics steps, so obviously we had a simple warm up/warm down. Younger children can get a bit bored by warming up/down so I made it seem like a game. We also talked briefly about how dance was good exercise and why exercise was important.

When covering the basic moves I found that, where adults like things broken down clearly and then time to practice, the children learned better by copying me and didn't like to spend too long on each move, preferring just to give everything a go. Lots of praise helped, as did metaphors (swaying like a tree in the wind, making your arms snaky etc) and they liked level changes - doing a move high then low. To encourage the boys I also did some saidi moves - they seemed happier with the hopping and jumping steps. I steered clear of movements that could be deemed too "sexy".

Music-wise I used the album that Nancy Ajram did specially for kids (Shakhbat Shakabeet), though this would be a bit young for older kids, plus some fun shaabi music like Hakim. Make sure the lyrics are not rude etc though as you may have some kids who can speak or understand Arabic!

At the end, they then followed me in some simple dances and after they warmed down I did a very short fun drum solo for them - they don't have the longest attention spans at that age and will fiddle and lose interest if you do too much of the same thing for too long.

I've taught older children in the past too, girls only though - I suspect that the boys will be even harder to convince at that age... There is quite a big difference between the older and younger children so you may find it better to split them into two groups if you can. By 12 the girls (and no doubt boys) can already be quite body-shy and sensitive so you will need to be very encouraging. They generally prefer to have things broken down a bit more and can assimilate combinations and choreography so you could always have them learn a simple dance. Music like "Kiss Kiss" (Simarik) by Tarkan and Shakira goes down well with this age group.

Hmm, this seems to have turned into rather a long post, but hopefully it will be helpful! Good luck!

07-02-2008, 11:43 AM	#2 (permalink)
Helena Bellydancer Junior Member Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Leeds Posts: 27	Hi Meg Are you performing for them, teaching them, or both? I recently did a 50 min workshop for a primary school for both girls and boys towards the lower end of the range you will be working with. I taught some very young kids too and they all just joined in - but with the 6-8 group the boys really baulked at doing dance as they are VERY sensitive at that age about not being seen to do "girly" things (and vice versa for girls). I suggest you make it clear right at the very start that both boys and girls dance like this in the Middle East! I started by giving a very short background of the dance. Kids have short attention spans so I made this a bit more interactive (they loved repeating back the Arabic for dance and telling me what they knew about Egypt etc). We then moved onto learning some basics steps, so obviously we had a simple warm up/warm down. Younger children can get a bit bored by warming up/down so I made it seem like a game. We also talked briefly about how dance was good exercise and why exercise was important. When covering the basic moves I found that, where adults like things broken down clearly and then time to practice, the children learned better by copying me and didn't like to spend too long on each move, preferring just to give everything a go. Lots of praise helped, as did metaphors (swaying like a tree in the wind, making your arms snaky etc) and they liked level changes - doing a move high then low. To encourage the boys I also did some saidi moves - they seemed happier with the hopping and jumping steps. I steered clear of movements that could be deemed too "sexy". Music-wise I used the album that Nancy Ajram did specially for kids (Shakhbat Shakabeet), though this would be a bit young for older kids, plus some fun shaabi music like Hakim. Make sure the lyrics are not rude etc though as you may have some kids who can speak or understand Arabic! At the end, they then followed me in some simple dances and after they warmed down I did a very short fun drum solo for them - they don't have the longest attention spans at that age and will fiddle and lose interest if you do too much of the same thing for too long. I've taught older children in the past too, girls only though - I suspect that the boys will be even harder to convince at that age... There is quite a big difference between the older and younger children so you may find it better to split them into two groups if you can. By 12 the girls (and no doubt boys) can already be quite body-shy and sensitive so you will need to be very encouraging. They generally prefer to have things broken down a bit more and can assimilate combinations and choreography so you could always have them learn a simple dance. Music like "Kiss Kiss" (Simarik) by Tarkan and Shakira goes down well with this age group. Hmm, this seems to have turned into rather a long post, but hopefully it will be helpful! Good luck!