You may have heard that playing games in dance class isn’t educational. WRONG! We are here to debunk that myth once and for all for dance teachers everywhere. There are many perks to playing games during class. Ok, we’re not talking about “Duck Duck Goose” or “Tag” but dance-related games that are geared towards continuing dancers' education in a fun, digestible way where they actually remember what they learned!
Turning dance concepts into games does several things for your dancers:
As for you, you also get to take a break from having to teach an intense day of coursework or material that, let’s be honest, sometimes feels daunting for even us, the teacher!
Here at Dance Ed Tips, we are all dance teachers, too. We have tried (and often failed!) many different ways to get our students excited about things like:
If our students don’t feel successful, we don’t feel successful and that's a hard feeling to have to repeat year after year.
Dance Ed Tips was created to solve these problems! We pride ourselves in being the ultimate one-stop-shop place for dance games and activities your students will be BEGGING you to play. We know! We’ve tested these products on dancers around the world and THEY ACTUALLY WORK.
Let’s talk about out top 8 best-selling games that are in hundreds of dance teachers’ bags across the world:
This Dance Games Variety Bundle is great for all ages, levels and styles of dance! Get your students excited about learning technique and/or improvisation through these team oriented games! This bundle of 6 amazing games is fun for dancers of all ages and levels!
Games include:
2. Online Dance Games for Zoom
We created this product during 2020 as a way to get dancers excited about learning dance online. However, these 8 interactive games for Zoom can be played online and in-person. Each game comes with instructions for both online and in-person and works for students of all ages! You can create so many varieties for each game.
Games include:
This digital bundle includes 110 cards that you can use for choreography, improvisation, dance games, and much more. It also includes instructions for 7 dance games and 4 traditional card games. These are great for PK-12 dance teachers, studio teachers, and dance camps!
Games include:
This bundle of 6 dance-themed icebreakers and games will get your students comfortable and moving in no time! Start off the year right and keep your students engaged all year long with these digital downloads of 6 different games introducing your students to each other, dance classroom settings, etiquette, and expectations. We have two different sets appropriate for elementary school as well as middle/high school ages.
Elementary games include:
Middle/high school games include:
Our vocabulary cards are one of our top-selling products! We have our Ballet Vocab Cards, Basic Laban Vocab Cards, and Advanced Laban Vocab Cards. There are so many different ways to use this physical product in your classroom! One of our favorite responses from students is, “Wow! I feel like I actually remember my ballet vocabulary now!” The Ballet Vocab Cards is a 36-card deck that helps your dancers learn how to properly say and write ballet terminology. This pack can be used for word walls, vocabulary identification, games, improvisation, or creating choreography. Our Basic & Advanced Laban Vocab Cards include 52 cards that make Laban Movement Analysis fun and exciting. These cards will help your students learn shapes, levels, and pathways, as well as body shaping, flow, effort, and more!
One idea of how to use these vocabulary cards is to play a similar version of “Simon Says.” Using the same structure, just say (or don’t say) “Teacher Says” and flash a card to your students! Psst, now that you’re adding an extra level to the game of them having to read the vocabulary card, they often forget if you said, “Teacher Says” or not.
Warm Up Cards are an excellent way to keep your regular warm ups fun and engaging. This 52-card deck includes 4 different phases of a good warm up:
When you’re running behind and need your students to warm themselves up, this is a great way to ensure they’re actually getting everything they need!
Movement Cards are the perfect way to spark inspiration and creativity not only for your students, but for yourself, too! This 56-card deck includes descriptive words, action words, and movement quality examples to help your students navigate through improvisation or their own choreography. Maybe you’re feeling stuck in a new piece? Pull out these cards and spark new ideas for yourself! Another great way to utilize these cards is to spice up everyone’s favorite - Freeze Dance. Have your students draw a card from the deck and then when you turn on the music, all the students have to move in a specific way!
This deck of 60 cards is the perfect way to encourage your students to give and receive feedback. These Feedback Cards include sentence starters for your students to provide meaningful feedback. Cards are a great resource for every classroom. They make learning hands-on, fun, and memorable! With these Feedback Cards, students will be able to give helpful suggestions and thoughtful compliments to their peers by using the sentence starters on each card. The cards help dancers give feedback on performance quality, musicality, and choreography!
Our ALL TIME best-selling product is Cards vs. Dancers™! It’s basically a dancer version of Apples to Apples! This is a great way to build community in your classroom and is sure to have everyone laughing. This game can be played in school as a community builder, with friends as a card game, or with teachers who need to spend some time relaxing with other dance teachers. It’s super easy. Each round, one dancer reads aloud a purple card. The other dancers respond with their silliest white card. The result? Lots of laughs and endless memories with your dance friends!
By purchasing this product, you will receive 162 cards in the Cards vs. Dancers™Deck for a hilarious fill-in-the-blank game.
As you can see there are so many advantages to playing educational, yet fun, dance games in the classroom or studio. We have some examples listed above but use your own imagination and come up with even more ways to use these products! Maybe your students will even have some ideas of their own!
We hope dance teachers and dance students everywhere can enjoy all the fun there is to have within dance. After all, that’s why we do what we do - to see the joy on our students' faces at the end of a great dance class!
