With the summer season hitting peak and schools closing for holidays, parents and children all over are in search of productive ways to occupy themselves. If you’re a skilled instructor or teacher, this is a great time to put something of your own together.

Summer Dance Camp for Kids

Working with children can be a real pleasure. They are in most cases far more open to experiencing and trying new things than most adults. They have less constrains and hang ups and of course, let’s not forget their high energy levels!

The question is, if you’re doing something like this for the first time, how would you go about making your summer dance camp be a roaring success?

Making it a Runaway Success

Where it might be a pleasure working with children, we’re guessing this is also something you’re doing professionally. We’re going to go over a few guidelines as to how you can make your summer dance camp lucrative for you and fun for those you work with!

Curriculum

When you’re working with children, especially over the summer, you want to decide what kind of classes you are offering. If you are trained and well versed in multiple dance styles you could mix things up a bit.

Alternatively you might want your summer dance camp to be geared towards a particular dance style say hip hop/street or ballet. Though with summer camp for kids, the rule of thumb would be to mix things up and offer, there are many who feel the summers are a good time to learn a serious skill!

It might help to run an online poll or survey over one of your social media accounts to get a sense of what the kids around you are more inclined to.

Get a Head Start on Logistics

The next thing you want to do is sort out your logistics. If you have your own space like a home studio which is large enough to take a class, that’s well and good. If not, you might have to connect with a gym or studio and look into spaces available.

Spatial Logistics

You will also need to ask about whether they rent out space or work on profit sharing where you give them a flat percentage for your earnings. See which mode of remuneration suits you financially and go for it.

Time Logistics

When you settle on space the next thing you want to do is settle on time. Where with adults you can have classes later in the evening, with children, you want to do whatever you need to by the afternoon or at latest early evening.

Recommended time slots when working with kids include the morning hours between 9:00 am and 12 pm. The other alternative would be between 4:00 pm and 6:00 pm in the evening. The afternoon slots might work but the assumption here is that children eat lunch around then.

The more convenient your timings are, the less prospective students and their parents need to stress about!

Group Logistics

Remember though working with children does allow you certain freedoms by way of creativity, you need to be a little more alert than you would with a group of adults. For this reason it is smart to go for a moderately sized group. Don’t over crowd your classes.

At the same time children need to interact so a group of under say 6 students might feel empty and dare we say a bit boring. Find an optimal number to work with; ideally, one which is manageable by you and fun for the kids.

Market Market Market

There are many of us who are uncomfortable with marketing ourselves and our services. Sadly, if its summer classes, you’re going to have competition.

For people to pick your classes over the dozens of others available to them over the summer, you’re going to need to work on putting the word out there.

Social media is great here. You can also tell friends and family to put out word for you and if you’re connecting with or renting space from a large studio or gym, you could ask for a spot on their notice board.

Make your advertising colorful, interactive and easy to understand! Market your classes or summer camp right and student numbers are bound to follow!

Keep Things Light

Regardless of whether you go for a mixed curriculum or decide to focus on a single dance style, just remember to keep things light.

Where children are fast learners and do have high energy levels, they do lack the attention spans that most adults might possess. Keep your instructions short and simple. Understand that levels of performance will vary and that’s okay.

The idea isn’t to chisel the next Anna Pavlova or Chris Brown (depending on what style you go for)! The idea is simply to allow children a space to come in, do their thing and develop an interest for something which is as healthy as it is beautiful!

Student Centered

Many of those who have worked closely with kids be it teachers, counselors or anyone else will tell you that they are experts on themselves. For this reason it always helps to make your classes student centered to a degree.

Talk to them; ask them if they have any feedback. Do they want longer water breaks? Would they rather spend more time dancing and less doing warm ups? Though you are an expert on your genre of dance, kids are their own specialists. They know what they need.

As an instructor working with them, it’s about bringing their desires and grounding them in your body of technical knowledge. Do this and both you and the kids you work with will benefit!

Approval

Again, these are children and approval means the world to them. Don’t just impart skills. Show them you approve! Give them a sense that their efforts are worthwhile. Don’t be stingy with your praise and compliments. If you’re warm and kinds to kids, they will love you for it and your classes will go even better!

Conclusion

If you follow the steps above, your summer dance camp should be a roaring success! There are other things you can do to shake things up and give your student numbers a boost! If you want to learn more about how to make your classes a success and how to keep your students and clients engaged, check out more of the material on our website!