Our "Frozen-Inspired" Dance Camp: Crafts

"Do You Wanna Dye a T-Shirt?" (sung in the melody of "Do You Wanna Build a Snowman")

This is part of our "Frozen" (inspired) Dance Camp Series.

We spend about 30-40 minutes on crafts, but always have a back-up plan for those who lose interest fast (some of the 4 year olds are more interested in the process, than the final product) or who are very detailed (need to place every piece of grass just so).

Good ideas of back-up plans are coloring pages (link to free printable Frozen coloring pages) / activity sheets or clips from the movie, if you have a TV or screen.  I actually made a YouTube playlist of Frozen clips on our computer just in case, but we never had to use it.

Now... onto the crafts!

My Camp Director and I pulled a lot of the craft and activity ideas off of Pinterest, so I will try to credit our original inspiration when possible.

Our "Frozen-Inspired" Dance Camp

Our most asked camp question since last December has been "Are you doing a Frozen Camp?"  So due to popular demand... a Frozen (inspired) Camp is what we did!

Our studio offers two types of camp: 5-day "Dance Camp" for ages 6-10 and 4-day "Princess Camp" for ages 4-7. For both camps, the students come each day for three hours from 9am - noon and we dance and do arts and crafts. Each year we do a different theme and base the week's lessons around that theme. We hold an impromptu little "show" on the last day of camp for family and friends.

I would say our approach to camp is very relaxed - focus on dance, crafts without a lot of theatrics / costumes - it works for us and leaves us with a lot of happy campers.

We did the Frozen (inspired) Camp for our Princess age group (ages 4-7) at the end of June, and we actually had to close off registration a week prior because of the demand!  (For comparison, our July Princess Camp was half as full as the Frozen Camp was).

I'm going to break up the posts into a few different sections, and hopefully they will give you some ideas for your own camp.
1) Music (this post)
2) Crafts 
3) Games & Activities 

General Camp Agenda 

8:50-9:05am - Parent Drop-off and Student Sign-in
9:05-9:30am - Warm-up and "Get to know you" activities - I like doing the Name Game as an icebreaker
9:30-10:00am - Ballet Dance class (learning choreography / technique)
10:00-10:45am - Craft Time
10:45-11:00am - Snack Time
11:00-11:40am - Tap class (learning choreography / technique)
11:40-12:00pm - Games / Cool-down

Dance Camp Playlist

All links open in iTunes - the Dance Buzz is an iTunes affiliate
I know you will all be surprised when I tell you that the most used album during our Frozen-Inspired Camp was... the Frozen album. Shocking, I know! But we also used a few other non-Frozen songs during our camp so that we (the teachers) didn't go crazy from having songs stuck our head all day!

Songs We Used for Choreography
Let It Go - Idina Menzel - for a ballet / lyrical
Love Is an Open Door - Kristen Bell - for jazz
For the First Time in Forever - for lyrical / sing along
In Summer - Josh Gad - for tap
Fixer Upper - Frozen - for tap

Songs We Used in Class (for creative movement, games, and technique)
Winter's Waltz - Frozen good for across the floor in ballet
Ice Dance - Edward Scissorhands - creative movement and free-dance
Let It Go / Vivaldi's Winter - The Piano Guys - good one for dramatic dancing, freeze dance
Waltz of the Snowflakes - The Nutcracker
Love Is an Open Door (Instrumental Karaoke version) - good for pass the beanbag, or warm-ups


What non-Frozen songs can you think of that would fit in well?

Summer Playlist Updates!

Hope you're all having a great summer!

Need some refreshments for your class playlists? Look no further - here are a few tunes to change up your playlist.  I'm teaching mostly tap this summer, so my playlist tends to lean in that direction, but most of these songs could easily crossover into jazz / children's hip hop / contemporary.

CHILDREN / TWEENS

- Call It Whatever (Bella Thorne)
- Really Don't Care (Demi Lovato)
- Dar Um Jeito/We Will Find A Way (Avicii / Santana) - the theme to the World Cup, a really good upbeat song
- Can You Do This (Aloe Blacc) -  I've been using this as part of an improv combination - on the chorus we trade 8's in tap class
- Classic (MKTO)

TEENS 

- Love Runs Out (One Republic) - its been all over the radio stations, but I love using this in tap class for warm-ups
- Basically I (Robert DeLong) - good warm-up / across the floor song
- On Top Of The World (Imagine Dragons) - a happy little song that makes me smile
- Luck (American Authors)
- Sing (Ed Sheeran)
- Problem (Ariana Grande) - another Top 40 rounds out my summer playlist update

See music player below to hear clips:



The Dance Buzz is an iTunes affiliate.

8 Instagram Post Ideas For Your Dance Studio

Is your dance studio or company on Instagram?  Scared to take the leap? (dance pun intended) Here's a few tips on how to get started and what to post.

Don't worry about posting daily - in fact, if you post too many times a day, you may annoy your followers.  It seems like the sweet spot is once a day to a few times a week.  For my studio, I end up posting on average 3-4 times a week unless I'm running a contest or it's a big event for the studio (recital or competition weekend, for example).

Ok, so now you've made an Instagram account... what do you post?

8 Instagram posts ideas for your dance studio or company

1. Your dancers:  The most obvious is to post images and videos of your students dancing!  Be sure to mix it up - some of the cute babies in class mixed in with your best students along with some great action shots from performances.

2. Behind the scenes:  Making costumes?  Folding programs?  Hanging the backdrop for the show?  My students and parents love to see the "behind the scenes" photos.

  

3. Class videos:  This is a great way to expose potential students to the different class types.  Post a short clip of your newest class offering to show students what that class might be like.

4. Hold a contest or photo challenge:  I like to hold contests during school breaks because it gives the kids something to do and keeps them thinking about dance.  Our most recent one was "Spring Break Photo Contest" and dancers had to post a photo of themselves dancing on Spring Break.  We got a lot of fun pictures back that we shared in-studio and on Facebook.  Make sure to use a hashtag for your contest (#ABCstudio).

• Leap / Jump Contest - followers have to post their best leap or jump
• Favorite Costume - post a photo of their favorite costume
• First Year Dancing - any photos from their first year of dancing
• Dance Everywhere - post a photo of them dancing in an unusual location

5. Dance education:  Post a photo of a famous dancer and have your followers guess who it is.  Share photos of famous ballets and dance companies.

6. Motivation & inspirational quotes:  I like to post these every so often.  I find a lot of them on Pinterest.  Instagram Etiquette Tip: If you borrow someone's quote, play nice and credit them.

7.  Hashtags:  (Or should I say #hashtags)  Hashtags are a fun way to make your post accessible to more people and are good for when you're looking for an idea to post something.  My favorite dance-related hashtags are:

• #TutuTuesday - anything ballet!
• #TiltTuesday - just what it sounds like
• #TBT or #FBF - (Throwback Thursday & Flashback Friday) - post an older photo from months or years ago.  These posts usually get the most "likes" on our studio Instagram.
• Make up your own! What about #musicmonday and post some songs from the upcoming performance?  Or #flexibilityfridays and showcase some tips on how to get more flexible.  Check out this great idea from Maria's Movers on creating a hashtag for your performances.  Some more hashtag ideas from Dance Spirit.

8. Integrate your posts with Facebook and Twitter:  Instagram makes it easy to connect your account to your Twitter and Facebook accounts and you can share the same posts on all three social media sites at one time.

Have fun!

Further Reading: http://schoolempower.com/blog/posts/20...

Follow The Dance Buzz on Instagram!

Do you use Instagram?  What tips can you share about posting photos and videos? What are your favorite photos to see?  What gets the most likes?

Light Dancing

Happy Wednesday!

If you're super crazy this time of year like I am, here is a short video to give you a break from the chaos and to just enjoy the dance and cool visual effects.



Talk about theater tech and dance coming together.  So cool!

Hope you enjoyed :)