Online Dance Classes: The Perfect Homeschool PE

I am not an all-weather person. To be honest, my kids aren’t either. When it’s wet, cold, and rainy, I want to be curled up with hot chocolate watching the gloom from my window. This makes it difficult to ensure we are getting exercise into our day. And our homeschool PE group, while indoors, is a bit sporadic. And well, not really geared toward whole families, just my older kids.

I wanted something we all could do and enjoy as a family. I thought, why not online dance classes? Dance classes in a studio for all my kids are just not in the budget, but on-demand dance classes like the ones from YouDance.com, fit nicely in our budget and our schedule.

Disclaimer: This post is sponsored by YouDance.com. I received a subscription to YouDance.com in exchange for my honest opinion. I was not required to write a positive review.

About Online Dance Classes from YouDance.com

YouDance.com was created from the vision of a homeschooling mother of three and dancer, Courtney, along with help from her husband. Courtney says,

I really struggled with finding a wholesome dance environment. I decided to create youdance because I wanted to provide a safe place at home for children to dance.

Courtney, founder of YouDance.com

With her incredible dance background and passion to share dance in a wholesome environment, YouDance.com was born.

Youdance.com offers beginning, intermediate, and even some advanced dance classes in five different dance styles.

How On-Demand Dance Classes from YouDance.com Work

The first step is signing up for an account. Next is to pick the class you want to start. You have access to all of the classes, so you can choose at your leisure.

I was delighted to see Clogging offered as one of their classes. I took clogging briefly when I was younger but had to stop due to cost. However, I have fond memories of it and was excited to start it again.

Once you’ve selected the type of dance you want to learn, you click on the first lesson in the Introduction. The introduction lessons give an overview of the style of dance, what equipment you may eventually want to get, counting, and the do’s and don’ts. From there you move on to your first lesson.

The lessons are broken down into short videos. Each video gives you the option to practice the move once it’s done. Clicking practice skips the beginning of the video with the explanation and goes to the portion where you are repeating the move over and over.

You can practice any move you’ve learned by going into the Practice Center. You can also rewatch any video as often as you need.

At the end of each lesson, there is a short quiz to evaluate concepts learned. The quizzes and practice center allow you to learn at your own pace.

Dance Points and Stars for Incentive

For each completed video, you earn dance points. You can also earn points for practice. For the Kids Dance Along lessons, kids earn stars as they move through the videos.

As a family or individual, you can set a number of dance points to earn each day. This helps you to monitor progress.

For younger kids, the stars serve as motivation to continue to the end of the video to get the last star.

Quality of YouDance.com Online Dance Classes

The classes from YouDance.com were high-quality dance classes. There are several different instructors, depending on the style and level of dance you are doing and they were all great. They were clear and concise in explaining new movements. The classes translated well into an online structure.

I never felt like there was an aspect I would have rather been in person for or a move I needed hands-on help with.

Reasons to Use Online Dance Classes for Your Homeschool PE

• Improved Physical Health–Dance is great for improving overall health. It increases coordination, agility, flexibility, endurance, and strength to name a few.
• Exploration of Dance Styles–Unlike in-studio classes, you get access to multiple dance styles for the same cost. This allows kids to explore different styles. Some of my kids discovered they didn’t care for specific styles of dance after all, but were pleasantly surprised to find they liked others.
• Confidence–Learning dance helps improve a child’s confidence. Not just in their attitude, but in their ability to be comfortable moving their body and spatial awareness.
• Rhythm–Learning dance helps with rhythm and keeping time. And for younger students, learning to count to ten.
• Discipline–Dance helps kids learn discipline as they commit to practicing and improving their skills.
• Safe–Unlike watching dance videos online with sites like YouTube, YouDance.com is safe for kids to use. There are no ads running. There’s no way for kids to accidentally on purpose buy something. And there’s no way for kids to click on something you don’t want them to.
• Flexibility–With on-demand dance classes, you can fit them in whenever they work for you.
• New Favorite Subject–When you find a PE your kids enjoy, they will want to do it. PE can become your new favorite homeschool subject.
• Budget-Friendly–YouDance.com is only $25/month or $180/year. That’s a steal for your whole family to have access to quality dance classes!

Our Experience Using YouDance.com for Homeschool PE

We’ve had a lot of fun adding lessons from YouDance.com into our homeschool day. Homeschool PE has never been easier!

My Kindergartener has enjoyed the lessons in the Kids Dance Along section. These are designed for younger kids and are perfect for her. She especially liked getting to dance with her baby doll.

The classes in the Kids Dance Along section also used fun graphics to help the kids know what to do.

My third grader, Olivia, decided to try her hand at clogging. On occasion, she would join me for my lessons, but she also had her own in the Kids Dance Along section.

For the kid’s videos, the warm-up was part of it. In the other lessons, you click the warm-up first before moving on to the lesson.

My middle schoolers like to jump around in music styles the most. For my son, it was an opportunity to step out of his comfort zone a bit. Having his sister do it with him helped. My daughter had a lot of fun and enjoyed learning different styles of dance.

I enjoyed watching them learn to pop and lock. After practicing lessons, there are follow-alongs and choreographed dances they can learn.

I enjoyed the clogging classes and the dance classes for exercise.

The Perfect Homeschool PE Class

It was nice to have immediate access whenever we needed it. I loved being able to let my kids take high-quality dance classes as our homeschool PE. With our other activities, we haven’t the time for studio classes, nor the budget for four kids to take dance classes. YouDance.com allows them to learn dance skills in the comfort of our home. They can try out different styles of dance and become confident as their skills and abilities increase.

And, I liked that I got to participate. It was fun to relearn a forgotten skill.

The fact there are no ads playing, was a big bonus for me. It meant I could set my kids up to dance and work on something else if I needed it. I didn’t feel the need to “babysit” the program.

Overall, we are enjoying our subscription to YouDance.com and will continue using it for homeschool PE. If you are looking for a fun homeschool PE option or online dance classes, in particular, YouDance.com is the perfect option.

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