DD's age 6's first love is gymnastics. She works out with her level 2 team T Th, 6 hours total. They also get pulled in some Saturdays.
She also loves dance.
She is precocious at neither, but puts in the man hours, KWIM?
This year she asked to dance at a studio instead of a rec center. So in August she started at a private studio. It was a 90 minute block for her age level, and due to location, DS and I pretty much were hanging around the strip mall. Parents can't watch except watch days.
After being on the fall sched for a month (home schooled) she also asked to do 1 hour of dance at the rec center and Saturday mornings in a church ballet program. As this was very cheap I allowed her to add.
Watch day came at the studio. Boy DD was having fun but she was not applying herself. I explained that DS and I did not want to hang out at the strip mall at the end of the day for her to have a princess party esp. since she was applying herself at the other two programs just fine (I can watch those as I want to ... which wasn't too often but enough for me to know she was applying herself.)
Talked to the studio about maybe having higher expectations for her. She said it would be best to just bump her up 1 level -- but that conflicts with gym team. So she tried bumping her up 2 levels -- convenient time for me, longer block so we could go home, and DD did like things well after the move. Studio owner thought that was mostly working out but then decided this month that it was too far over DD's head. So wanted to move her to a day that won't work for the family. So ... we're out of that studio for now.
DD still has 1 hour at the rec center (barely instructive, but cheap and fun) and the church dance program (very instructive) so I don't have to find her something else.
What is nagging at me is the approach the studio took with the girls. I don't want to make the same mistake next year.
One of my problems with the first class DD was in was that they were saying "good job" to basically anything the kids did. I would see DD doing half a normal stretch and everything was good job. I think they were really only modeling dancing and not correcting. DD, being in gym, is used to being corrected if they want more for her. It's not that she doesn't want to do well, but while she at age 6 has the discipline to show up, she's not going to constantly be monitoring herself particularly if the teachers say that everything she does is hunky-dory. She will live up to expectations as she understands them ... and it's best that they are explicit.
Well in the final conference last night at the studio I said something to the owner like "Well in the Saturday class are they going to be doing more direct instruction?" and she said of course, but what we see on watch day is not going to be what goes on in a typical class. So I said "So you are going to be correcting body positions and so forth" and she said "You will never see that on watch day. We do not correct kids in front of parents. We would never embarrass them like that." To be honest I don't think they are correcting them very much when the parents aren't looking either ...
This is the point at which I get lost with some instructors and end up looking for a better teacher for my child. I don't understand what is embarrassing about being corrected neutrally -- in the church dance program, for example, the teacher is constantly walking around giving verbal or manual corrections to body positions. I saw none of that on Watch Day at the studio. None. So ... what am I missing? I don't really want to pay for my child to not be instructed ... and for me instruction means corrections. Emotion neutral, diplomatic corrections. What is embarrassing about that?
I think it's hard for me to find good quality dance programs for my 6 year old. I guess. I'm lucky to have the church dance program. But I know DD would like to be in a studio again. There was a studio we loved, but it closed.
Um ... so can someone comment on their experiences maybe in dance studios and how the instruction differs from gymnastics training?
She also loves dance.
She is precocious at neither, but puts in the man hours, KWIM?
This year she asked to dance at a studio instead of a rec center. So in August she started at a private studio. It was a 90 minute block for her age level, and due to location, DS and I pretty much were hanging around the strip mall. Parents can't watch except watch days.
After being on the fall sched for a month (home schooled) she also asked to do 1 hour of dance at the rec center and Saturday mornings in a church ballet program. As this was very cheap I allowed her to add.
Watch day came at the studio. Boy DD was having fun but she was not applying herself. I explained that DS and I did not want to hang out at the strip mall at the end of the day for her to have a princess party esp. since she was applying herself at the other two programs just fine (I can watch those as I want to ... which wasn't too often but enough for me to know she was applying herself.)
Talked to the studio about maybe having higher expectations for her. She said it would be best to just bump her up 1 level -- but that conflicts with gym team. So she tried bumping her up 2 levels -- convenient time for me, longer block so we could go home, and DD did like things well after the move. Studio owner thought that was mostly working out but then decided this month that it was too far over DD's head. So wanted to move her to a day that won't work for the family. So ... we're out of that studio for now.
DD still has 1 hour at the rec center (barely instructive, but cheap and fun) and the church dance program (very instructive) so I don't have to find her something else.
What is nagging at me is the approach the studio took with the girls. I don't want to make the same mistake next year.
One of my problems with the first class DD was in was that they were saying "good job" to basically anything the kids did. I would see DD doing half a normal stretch and everything was good job. I think they were really only modeling dancing and not correcting. DD, being in gym, is used to being corrected if they want more for her. It's not that she doesn't want to do well, but while she at age 6 has the discipline to show up, she's not going to constantly be monitoring herself particularly if the teachers say that everything she does is hunky-dory. She will live up to expectations as she understands them ... and it's best that they are explicit.
Well in the final conference last night at the studio I said something to the owner like "Well in the Saturday class are they going to be doing more direct instruction?" and she said of course, but what we see on watch day is not going to be what goes on in a typical class. So I said "So you are going to be correcting body positions and so forth" and she said "You will never see that on watch day. We do not correct kids in front of parents. We would never embarrass them like that." To be honest I don't think they are correcting them very much when the parents aren't looking either ...
This is the point at which I get lost with some instructors and end up looking for a better teacher for my child. I don't understand what is embarrassing about being corrected neutrally -- in the church dance program, for example, the teacher is constantly walking around giving verbal or manual corrections to body positions. I saw none of that on Watch Day at the studio. None. So ... what am I missing? I don't really want to pay for my child to not be instructed ... and for me instruction means corrections. Emotion neutral, diplomatic corrections. What is embarrassing about that?
I think it's hard for me to find good quality dance programs for my 6 year old. I guess. I'm lucky to have the church dance program. But I know DD would like to be in a studio again. There was a studio we loved, but it closed.
Um ... so can someone comment on their experiences maybe in dance studios and how the instruction differs from gymnastics training?