EP 58: Tiny Technicians- Teaching Our 3-7 Year Old Dancers

The foundation for strong, confident dancers starts in the earliest years of training. This episode explores how intentional teaching can shape dancers from ages 3 to 7.

In this episode of It’s All Relative, Cara dives into teaching 3 to 7-year-old dancers and why these early years are so important for building proper technique, confidence, body awareness, and a strong foundation for future training.

Cara introduces the FOCUS method, which focuses on Fun, Obtainable goals, Curiosity, Understanding, and Structure to help young dancers stay engaged while developing meaningful dance fundamentals.

Cara talked about:

• Balancing fun and engagement with proper dance fundamentals
• Using the FOCUS method to support young dancer development
• Creating structure and repetition so dancers feel comfortable in class
• Using stories, games, music, and visual cues to teach technique
• Setting small, measurable goals and celebrating progress
• Building proper alignment and body awareness from an early age

The FOCUS Method:

F: Fun
Use stories, games, music, silly voices, movement, and playful energy to keep young dancers engaged while still teaching technique.

O: Obtainable
Give dancers small, measurable goals they can actually achieve. For a three-year-old, success might simply be standing in a line, following a class routine, or completing a focused plié sequence.
C: Curiosity
Move beyond constant correction by encouraging dancers to ask questions and become curious about what they are feeling, what they are doing, and why they are doing it.

U: Understanding
Help dancers develop a deeper mind-body connection instead of simply mimicking shapes. When young dancers understand what they're doing, they become more capable and confident.

S: Structure
Create predictable routines and consistent classroom processes so young dancers know what to expect. Repetition and structure can reduce anxiety and help children feel comfortable in the studio.

Teaching young dancers is about more than keeping them entertained. These early years are where teachers can build the technique, confidence, curiosity, and body awareness that prepare dancers for their next stage of training.

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Transcript

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Welcome to It's All Relative, the podcast where dance technique meets purpose, progress becomes visible, and passion fuels the path forward. I'm Kara Dixon, co-founder of Relative Motion, and our team is made up of professional dancers, teachers, and choreographers here to make high-level training feel doable, measurable, and exciting again. Whether you're a teacher searching for fresh cues, a dancer craving more clarity, or a studio owner chasing a bigger vision, this space is for you. Each week, we'll break down complex technique, dive into real studio strategy, and share tools that spark transformation from the inside out. Because in this community, we train with intention, we lead with love, and we know that better dancers start with better teachers. So let's grow, let's move, and let's rise together. Because at the end of the day, it's all relative. Good morning, friends, and welcome to our next episode. Today is the beginning of a new season. So whether you're starting mid-August where we are now, or maybe you're starting beginning, middle of September, we are right there. We're right there in that moment where we're starting a new season. The hype is there, we're excited. So today I want to talk about something that's really important and it can often be overlooked in a studio setting and in those goals that we're planning, in the curriculum that we're trying to build out, or the intention we're putting on certain teachers, right? This is our what we might consider our baby classes, where maybe it's that three to five, three to seven age group. And I want to talk heavily about this right now because it is the beginning of the season. We can do a lot to mold to that age group, to really plan for it and to make this year incredibly intentional for our littles. The first thing I really want to touch in on is there is kind of this understanding sometimes when we're hiring a new teacher that we really want to give teachers opportunities to teach, but maybe we feel like they're not ready to take on the advanced classes. And most new teachers, they're not really experienced enough to break down that upper level technique to make it achievable. And so advanced classes might not exactly be where they shine. Now, here's the thing: often what happens at that point is we want to hire that teacher, we see their potential, but they're not yet ready for our advanced classes. So we're like, you know what you can do? Perfect. We'll put you in with our babies, we'll start you there. And often the baby classes are those starter teaching classes. One thing I want to do today is kind of challenge that idea because yes, those dancers, those new teachers, they're not ready to be in our advanced classes. They're not ready to lead that level of technique. However, the baby classes, those littles, they are going to be one of the most challenging classes that are being taught at the studio for so many reasons. But also, one thing I want to add on to the fact that those ages are very challenging to teach is that we're also training in a lot of ways the families that are bringing those dancers in. Those dance families have often not been in a studio setting before. They're not really sure what to expect, what the culture of the studio is. So those teachers are not only trying to teach great technique to these little, little dancers, they're also trying to really nurture the families. And so it's a huge responsibility. So I want to put that out there first before we even dive into what this episode is, which is teaching technique to that age. But I want to like really challenge the idea of putting our youngest, most inexperienced dancers in that role because it's heavy and it there's a lot of layers to it. Now, the other thing I want to challenge is that when we bring those younger teachers in, we often get one of two types of teachers in those classes. The first type of teacher is the type of teacher that's like, oh, they're little and I have young energy and I'm gonna give them so much fun stuff. And so they overdo the fun. And that's great. Those kids need fun, but we don't need to overdo the fun. That level needs a perfect amount of fun, silly, engaging energy along with fundamentals. So the fun has to also develop into fundamentals. The flip side of that is a teacher that comes in and they're like, I'm gonna give these dancers such great technique, and they forget that these dancers are still little and that the dancers have really short attention spans, their developmental level is not there. And so we really want to have teachers that have a great balance between really fun, engaging energy, really exciting the kids, getting down on their level, and at the same time making sure that those dancers are getting the fundamentals so that when they get to that seven to nine level, we're not struggling to transition our littles into our competitive levels. That seven and nine can be often very tricky. And our next episode will be about that because a lot of times the younger dancers, they're just mimicking shapes. They don't really have the understanding of what they're gonna need at seven, and by the time they're nine for sure. And so we're teaching them and then we have to reteach them. And then that seven and nine teacher, they really have this super transitional period where things are not really lining up in the way that they should for dancers that have been in class already for two to four years. We really want to make sure they have the foundation. So today I'm gonna dive into this method. We talk about this a lot in our tiny technicians programming because it's a method that brings about a sense of engagement and improvement in that three to seven age group. And that's our focus method. So I'm gonna talk about our focus method today on our time together, on our podcast together, and just dive into some tools and tips that we can give our teachers, right? At this point, we've already hired the teachers for that level. So if you're thinking, oh my goodness, that's exactly what I did. I put my most inexperienced teachers in that level. No big deal. Okay, we're gonna work through this. We're gonna like give some tips, we're gonna give some tricks that we can focus on this season that's really gonna propel any teacher that's in that level to get those dancers really engaged, but also really improving. And so let's jump into our focus method now. The focus method, we're talking all about nurturing young dancers to their fullest potential. And also, this is gonna help us with program retention because, like I said, a lot of these parents, it's their first time walking into class. So they're not gonna like it if their dancer leaves and every day they're like, we just stood here, you know, we were just at the bar for an hour. We need to move, we need to have this be an engaging experience for them, but we also want them to know that like they will be getting technique, they will be becoming better throughout the course of the year. So, in our focus method, the F is fun. All right. Children are learning through play. So the more we can bring stories into class, the more we can bring games, the more we can help them grow. This is how we're gonna see them thrive and develop. A lot of fun is gonna be being silly, getting down on the dancers' levels, just having the energy to keep the engagement going. Now, I'm gonna go quickly through the letters. We're gonna break them down a little bit more as we go on in this episode, but just really hitting those letters quickly. The O of focus is gonna be obtainable. Now, this is them having a goal. We want them to have a goal that they see the entire course of the class and that they're actually being able to achieve so they feel confident and excited after class. Now, we talk about this with older dancers. We also want to bring this into our littles. We want to be celebrating them. We want to be excited about what they're doing in class, what they're able to accomplish, every little goal. And for the littles, for our threes, it might be that they stood in a line for the first time this week. And this is one reason why it's really hard to have registration for our threes class up through like March or April. Sometimes it's easier to close it out, like say January, February, because the dancers that are there in September, you will see they're just scattered. It's like trying to get ants to stand in a line, right? Because they're just like they come in and they're just everywhere. And so sometimes it can take even a month or two months to get our three to fours to stand in a straight line, especially if they're not yet in the preschool setting, you know, and so they're not getting that structure outside. So it can take a little while to even get those threes to understand standing in a line or standing on their circle or little things like that. So when we add new dancers in, you know, sometimes March, and we want them to be on stage in, you know, May or June for a recital, we start to feel that shift that doesn't really work out that great in our classes because they're not at the same level, even as far as the basic discipline of class. So obtainable can be as small as man, with their learning to stand in line, they're learning to have a line leader, they're learning to that when they first come to class, they do this and that. The next one is curiosity. C is curiosity. A lot of times in technique, we'd be like, yes, you know, you have it, or no, you don't. And a lot of it is a no. And so we want to teach our dancers that it's not just yes and no. We're not just critiquing, critiquing, and critiquing. We want those dancers to be curious, right? We want this idea in their mind that they can ask themselves questions and understand it a little bit more, that they can learn through this curiosity mindset. They can learn freely, they can find their limits and they can know where those limits are and how to grow. And so we want to start that really young. We talk about this a lot with our older levels. It starts young. We want them to like really know. And three-year-old kids in general are like in a why phase. If I say to my child, don't go towards the straight why. Okay, hey, I don't want you buy a pull by yourself. Why? They're in a why phase. So this is a great time to instead of being like, oh, they're always asking why, to be like, okay, they're learning. They're like really curious about this. It's not just yes and no for them. It's like there's this gray area in between where they don't have the understanding yet and they really want it. And so really dive into that. The you is understanding. When they understand what to do, they feel more capable and they feel more confident. And so we talk about this a lot is that a lot of dancers are mimicking shapes. They don't really get it, they don't really understand it. And so every time they're about to do something technically, there's this question mark over it about whether it's even gonna happen. And so understanding is really getting it, getting that mind-body connection and making these connections that are deeper. And S is structure. Kids, especially young kids, they thrive on predictability, they excel with predictability. So structure is going to be vital in these classes that we're teaching for the young kids. Now, this is focus, F-O-C-U-S. These five things bring about a child's true positive focus in class. And when they focus, they thrive. So when a child leaves class happy, when they leave class excelling, they're excited to come back and their families become less of a client and more of a family from a young age. And so this is why this is so important because we're not just building technique, we're building community. We're building something that's like a C-driven. We really want the family there. We want that family feeling. So, in most things that we talk about here at relative motion, we love reverse engineering. So, what we're gonna do with the focus method is we are gonna reverse engineer it. And this is a great thing, great foundation to give your young teachers, to give those little teachers, like the three to sevens. We are going to reverse engineer this focus process. And so the first thing, which was our last thing, is structure everything from the beginning of class to the end. We want it to be formatted. We want the kids to know what to expect from the minute they walk into the door, right? So when they walk in, are they finding the dot? When they walk in, are they bringing their bags and putting them somewhere specific? Or do the parents keep the bags? When they walk in, is there a certain area for if they brought a water bottle? When they walk in, is there something that they expect? Maybe it's the same warm-up, maybe it's the same story, maybe it's the same process, maybe it's a new progression going across the floor, but it's the same game for picking a line leader. So we really want them to have consistency, especially in the littles. Repetition is everything. If every time they come in the room, there's a new thing that we're doing, a new process, it's a lot. They get nervous. There's more anxiety. They're little. That's one of their first times leaving their parents at all to go into a sport or a class. And so the more structure, the more consistency we have, the more comfort it's gonna give them, and the more likely they are to look in the classroom, see that everything's the same as they expect it to be, and leave their mom happily. Okay, understanding. So we're gonna dive into this a little bit. We wanna find visual cues and stories. We want to use stories to have young dancers understand what their body's designed to do. When they're talking about a three-year-old, there's so many things that we know that they don't know. Okay, they don't know all their letters yet. They don't know how to really count that high yet. Some colors, they might know basic colors, but they not might not know more advanced colors. They know some animals, they don't know all the animals. So we're talking about they know some shapes, they don't know all the shapes. And so when we're talking about these little dancers, we have to find things that they know. So even talking about little babies and they're trying to figure out their first position, maybe we talk about an alligator mouth for finding the first position. Okay, close the alligator mouth, open it up. I mean, one thing that I used to do with littles is I would go around the circle and be like, your alligator's so hungry. What do you think your alligator wants to eat? Open your alligator mouth. And we go around the circle, and each kid could pick one item that they want their alligator to eat. Oh, I want my alligator to eat cookies, jump, and they close the first position back to parallel. Oh no, your alligator's hungry again, open its mouth, and then the next dancer goes. And so it's a story they understand, right? But it's also fun, it's engaging. You're getting to know each dancer individually in this moment. It gets them more engaged. They're learning to talk a little bit in class. They're not so shy, they're excited. And when that repeats week after week, they get pumped. They're like, oh, this week I'm giving my alligator grapes. They get really excited about it. So, like little things. Hello toes for flexing the feet if they're sitting on the floor. Goodbye, toes. They stretch the feet. Hello toes, goodbye, toes, and like fun voices, good energy in the voice, maybe with chaussets. One foot's the cat foot, right? And they're tapping it, and the other foot's the dog foot, and we're like, Where's our cat foot? And we stretch a tondue to one side. Where's our dog foot? Stretch the tondue to the other side. Okay, get your cat foot out. The dog wants to chase the cat. So the cat's gonna run, the dog's gonna chase it, the cat's gonna run, the dog's gonna, and that becomes their chassis. And they there's a story, and they're like, Oh, are my dog's gonna chase my cat? Is it gonna catch it? And now they are going faster and they're going faster, but they're also understanding the process of the chassis and understanding the movement pattern of that chausset and starting to get it into their body as opposed to, okay, we want to step out, we want to jump together, step out. It's not as fun, it's not as engaging. So, what are some stories? They know alligators, they know hello, goodbye. They say that to their families all the time. They know dogs and cats. So, how can we get them to understand in a way that they can understand those concepts? And the more that they understand, the more excited they get. So, that is something you want them to leave class thrilled. They had a great time. And children are also never too young to understand proper alignment. So, we want to take the time in this process to check their placement, make sure we're keeping them safe. Otherwise, we train them when they're three to seven, we retrain them when they're seven to nine. And that's really we lose a lot of dancers in that time period. It's it's frustrating to think that they've been dancing for four years and they have to relearn it. So we want to make sure that we're constantly teaching them the way that we want them to learn later. And that's one thing with younger dance, the teachers in those levels. Sometimes if they're not experienced, they really don't know how to intervene at that point and like get them back on track and really understanding it. So, as a studio owner, if you're a studio owner on this podcast, really keep an eye on those teachers and nurture them in the way that we want them to nurture the younger dancers in their teaching and mentor them. The next thing is curiosity. So we talked about this briefly earlier, but a lot of technique begins with a no. We want dancers safe, we want them in the proper alignment. So a lot of critiquing is a no. And so, what we want to do is we want to get dancers curious and asking good questions. We want the big W's. What? Where? Why? This will get them where they need to be faster, right? The minute dancers level out of those baby classes, encourage them to get curious about what they're feeling. So when they're in the baby classes, start with small questions, start with little things. But when they're leveling out, when we're in seven and nines, and we'll talk about this in the next podcast. We need to get super curious about our bodies. We need to start really giving them those questions when they're little, like the whys, the what's, what are we feeling? Why? What are we doing? Why? But when they get in those seven and nines, the curiosity has to explode. When those dancers level out at the baby classes, they need to be like, okay, what is this? Why am I feeling it? What should I be feeling? All the things, right? We want them to start to have language around it in the seven and nines. So we'll talk about that next episode. Give them a lot of visual measurable goals, give them a lot of cues. So we want our dancers to know right away, not only that they're making the shape, but what is what is that feeling? Where are we going with this? All the little things that are gonna give them the clues that they're gonna need later when they're a little bit older. Remembering also, as we're talking about getting curious, our dancers in that three to seven zone, they have a very short attention span. Okay, and we'll talk about that in just a little bit too. So we want to ask questions about what they feel. We want them to get good information, we want them to know that they're on the right track. We want to know that they're on the right track. And now we also want to, and we're gonna go circle back to what I just said a second ago. We wanna go through an exercise slow, but we wanna proceed through the class fast. So we want the dancers to have progress, but we don't want them to get bored, especially in the three to nine, the three to sevens, then the seven to nines. If the three to sevens, the attention spans are very short. I mean, they can stand there, but they have to move it up quick. So we want to go through an exercise slow enough that they get it, but we wanna proceed through class fast enough that they're engaged. And so there's gonna be an interesting dynamic, an interesting balance and learning what that is. And as the class goes on, the time that they can kind of stay on an exercise is gonna be longer, but we always want to read the room. The second that they're wiggling, the second they're hanging on the bar, the second that they're doing, we move forward. We're on to the next thing. Because once we lose them, they're gone. And then we feel like we're hurting ants. We feel like we're like trying to pull a bunch of little dancers that are running in opposite directions back together. I hear this all the time with babies. It's like that classroom management slips. So as soon as we see them start to wiggle, we've lost them. We're about to lose them. Get them back before we really lose. Once we lose them, they're gone. Obtainable. We want to set small, measurable goals so that each dancer moves to them and through them quickly. So, you know, we'll talk more about this in the seven and nines, especially. This example I'm gonna give right now is more of a seven and nine example, but a lofty goal would be like a double pyramid. But a small attainable goal would be a passe with squared hips. And a passe with squared hips is not gonna happen for a three-year-old, right? For most three-year-olds, I'm saying there are those dancers that are just gonna blow us out of the water, but most three-year-olds don't have that body awareness. And so we're not even thinking passe with squared hips for a three-year-old. We're thinking standing straight on our circle, hands on the hips, feet in first position, and doing a plie sequence with a focus. That is a goal for a three and four-year-old. That's gonna take weeks. So just like just knowing the level that we're at and what they're able to do. Measurable. We'll talk about this a little bit more in our seven to nines. And then hitting small goals sets off the dopamine. So that makes dancers feel good and that makes them want to repeat the behavior. So if there's something that we can celebrate in a three to sevens, we celebrate hard. We want them to be excited. We want them to know they're making progress. We want them to celebrate themselves and just get in the habit of doing that. And then going back to fun. Fun was our first one, now it's our last one, but it's just as important. We just want to make sure it's the icing on the cake, especially with babies. But continuing on, we don't want our dancers to get to a certain level and start to burn out. We always want them to be having fun. And so fun can be on several levels. We're gonna give you a few ideas, and I want you to think about overlapping some of these ideas. The first thing, and this is so vital for our three to sevens, those teachers have to have good energy. If we put a teacher in that room that has dull energy, we are going to lose them. This is important forever that a teacher has the energy that they're excited in class, but especially for the littles, this energy is contagious. We have to be silly. That teacher needs to be able to get down on their level and be silly, say silly things, make silly sounds. You silly voices, young children are obsessed with music. So the more we can be like sing songgy, that's gonna be infectious for them to be around. And I used even say that with little babies, we don't want to always talk to kids like babies. But with little babies, like having a higher tone and a sing songgy voice, it gets babies like super focused. And threes are not that old. So we need to think like, okay, keep that sing-songing fun, young engagement for them. We want to do fun songs, we want to play fun music. Now it needs to stay, obviously, we know that. But songs that are funny, that tell a story, something that makes the movement easy for a child to remember. The more the music can lead the class, the better at that age. If they can think of the song like splish splash, I was taking a bath. There's so many little words in that song that help a dancer remember a movement. So a song like that is a great song to give dancers jump out of the top, put my feet on the floor. They could be on their dot, and then you want them to jump forward, right? And maybe they do two stomps, something like that, where it's like the music is reminding them what the fun thing is that they're about to do. And this is great for recital dances. So we can use it in a small way in class absolutely every single week. Try to find music that leads. Recital, woof. The more the music leads, the more you're gonna have three-year-olds going on stage confidently, and you don't even need to be in the wings giving them little tips. So keep that in mind for those recital dances too. Bushel in a pack, oh, that's a good one. You know, like things like that. Stories. Kids learn by stories to tell them something that's attached. We used the example earlier. Hello, toes, goodbye toes, right? If they say hello to someone, they see the person. If they say goodbye to someone, that person's out of sight. And so getting them to understand. Now, we don't always want to talk about pointing toes because dancers will just really focus only on the toes. This is just getting them to understand the full foot, but we later are gonna have to move away from toes and say, stretch your feet, point your feet. We really want them to focus forward on the full foot and even the lower leg, which we'll talk about in more advanced classes. But for this, just to get the toes to move up with the whole foot, we're gonna sit hello toes, pull those, pull those feet into a flex position. Games, kids learn through play. So anytime we introduce a game, we can kind of guide them into understanding what we want. Now, here's the difference. A lot of teachers will come in, they'll just be like, here's some scarves. We're gonna do like, I'm gonna put on music, just free dance with scarves. Okay. We might be just throwing that time in the trash can. So, like, for instance, say they're doing freeze dance and you're like, turn the music on, they just crazy freeze dance, turn the music off, we stop. We are not capitalizing on that time, we're not using that time effectively for technique. And so, but if we've been learning big marches and the foot's coming up to passe every single time, we have those scarves, and we're like, okay, when the music comes on, I want you to do your big poses all around the room, and you can wave your scarf however you want. As soon as the music stops, I want you to put both feet side by side and freeze. And now instead of it's still a fun game, they're still engaged, but they're moving and they're doing the passe that we were working on earlier. And then as soon as the music stops, the scarf stops and they stop and they're learning how to listen and they're learning how to understand those things. And so follow the leader is a good one. Maybe we're like, okay, this person's leader, we're gonna follow the leader. It's you know, but we're gonna do it with chaussets. Boom. You know, it could just be like free dance followed later. Now, there is time for dancers to have freedom and they can learn improv and stuff. But I would just say, as a rule of thumb, let that be once a month that it's just like an improv game. Other times, because they're not really you're old enough, but we do want them to have the freedom to understand their body and understand what movement feels good on them. But otherwise, we really want to take advantage of them learning that technique. And so just finding the balance. It's all about balance in these ages. And also things like stickers and stamps, little things to say congratulations to celebrate them as they're leaving class. They love feeling like they did a good job. It's a great way for them to walk out of the classroom with a huge smile on their face that they got the sticker and they're excited and they can't wait to come back. And what sticker are they getting next week? And I want to earn that sticker. I was line leader and I did a great job and like all the things we can celebrate for them. And so this is longer than our typical episodes, but I just wanted to give you some really solid, tangible things that you could take with you into the classroom. Or if you have a young teacher that you just hired, or you have a teacher that's feeling like in a slump with teaching those younger classes, this is just extra tips, extra fun, extra things that we can add into the classroom to give us that edge as we go into a new year to really take those younger classes and propel them, guide them, nurture them so that when they become our seven to nines, they are crushing it. We really want them to go into the next level, that transitional, like preparing for competitive dance, ready. And it all starts here at the threes. It all starts here in that three to seven age group. So I know you're gonna be amazing this year. I know your teachers are gonna be amazing. If you're the studio teacher, I know you're crushing, I know you're doing an awesome job. I'm so excited. Take this, have fun with it, enjoy the start of a new season, and I will see you next week as we're talking about all things seven to nines. That's a wrap on today's episode of It's All Relative. Thank you for spending your time with us. We believe what you bring to the dance world matters, and we're honored to support the way you teach, read, and inspire. If this episode moved you, made you think, or gave you something new to try, hit that subscribe button so you don't miss what's next. You can connect with us anytime at RelativeMotion Dance on Instagram or visit relativemotiondance.com for more tools and training. Until next time, keep growing, keep leading, and keep dancing with purpose. Because remember, it's all relative.