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welcome!
Teaching little ones can be hard. I get it. I’ve been there. Where lesson planning took up all of my time and my students still weren’t paying attention.
You're in the Right Place.
Hi! I’m Ashley! Founder and owner of Children's Dance Method.
I had students who talked during what seemed like ALL of class. I had students who wandered around the room instead of participating. There were students who decided to do their own dance instead of waiting their turn in line.
And the worst part was, my students who did actually pay attention and were naturally eager to learn were getting frustrated because I had no idea what a truly developmentally and age-appropriate class was. I was making them to too much technique and technique that was way too advanced.
I was tired. I was frustrated too. Dance had been my life. I loved dancing and I couldn’t figure out how to transfer that over to a toddler and preschool dance class.
Why was this so hard?
I desperately wanted my students to be happy. To enjoy to coming to my class while also learning.
I wanted to be the preschool dance teacher at my studio that all of the parents requested. I wanted my students to want to pay attention and to want to learn. I wanted them to be so excited to come to class that they couldn’t wait from one week to the next.
One day, I realized something. There was one type of activity that always kept my students’ attention.
What was it? Anything we did related to fairy tales. As time went on, I realized something else. It wasn’t that it was fairy tales, per say, but that I always had my students role playing when we did anything with fairy tales.
I started doing more and more story-based dance classes. At first, my classes were a mix of different themes and stories. They were still engaging, but where the real magic happened was when I began teaching so that each class was a single theme or story. We’d explore oceans in one class and blast off into outer space in the next. We’d swim with mermaids or fly with Peter Pan. We’d get ready and go with Cinderella to the ball.
Then I became a mama and I began to understand that dance can do so much more for children than teach them movement and creativity. It should be fun and magical. It should prepare them for a structured ballet or dance class later on. BUT it should also foster their development.
Movement is so important for young children. It helps their bodies AND their brains to grow and develop. It helps them to learn about themselves and the world surrounding them. Children are meant to move. They’re meant to climb and jump and balance.
Movement directly relates to brain development. When a child jumps, for example, she is doing more than just building strength in her feet and legs. More blood flows to her brain from the physical activity, and she is using the same part of her brain that controls focus, attention and concentration. She is improving her attention span too!
And all of this is why I’ve crafted each story-based activity and lesson plan in Once Upon A Ballet to teach dance to toddlers and preschoolers with fun, imagination, AND age-appropriate child development in mind. Dance activities and lesson plans are story-based and set to the most beloved stories, themes, and fairy tales.
Cheering you on!
- Ashley Hartford
DANIELLE BRABSTON
Briarwood Ballet
Birmingham, AL, USA
What Others are Saying
NADIA GIULIANO
Naturalmente Danza
Perugia, Italy
KARI NOVIKOFF
Ponderosa Youth Theatre
Lake Wenatchee, WA, USA
AMY KOTARA
Turning Pointe Dance
Abilene, TX, USA
VICKIE SZEPLAKI
Kidz Gym and Dance in
Lambertville, NJ, USA
NAOMI ROBERTS
NA Dance Company
Sydney, NSW, Australia
Meet Our Team of Contributors
Founder + Director, Children's Dance Method
Ashley Hartford
Ever since she was a little girl, Ashley loved ballet. She first fell in love when she saw The Nutcracker on TV at age five, followed by Cinderella on stage on a school field trip. Growing up in east Tennessee, she trained at Dance Arts under Bruce Alan Ewing, and Van Metre School of Dance under Cheryl Van Metre and Amy Morton Vaughn. She also attended Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts for Ballet under full scholarship and studied ballet at the Washington Ballet School and Maryland Youth Ballet.
Ashley danced professionally with the Appalachian Ballet Company in Knoxville, TN, performing as a principal dancer her last six seasons with the company. She performed at numerous Southeast Regional Ballet Association festivals, as well as Regional Dance America’s 2007 national festival. She has performed both classical and contemporary ballet, including original works such as In the Shadows; Black, White and Read All Over; Virulent; Flying Dreams; and When the Dust Settles. She has performed in the Appalachian Ballet’s full-length productions and classical excerpts of The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, Coppelia, Cinderella, Peter Pan, Swan Lake, Don Quixiote, Romeo and Juliet, Carmina Burana, and Witchboy on Bald Mountain. Her favorite roles have been the Dew Drop Fairy in The Nutcracker, Tiger Lily in Peter Pan, and the Autumn Fairy in Cinderella.
Ashley began teaching dance in 2002 through Rising Stars, a grant-funded outreach program with the former Knoxville City Ballet and University of Tennessee. She later taught at Van Metre School of Dance in Maryville, TN. In 2014, Ashley opened the Once Upon a Ballet Dance Academy in Westminster, Colorado, and taught ballet until moving to Castle Rock, Colorado. Since closing her studio, Ashley has turned Once Upon a Ballet into an online resource, providing teacher training, teaching guides, and themed and story-based class lesson plans. As Children's Dance Method, today, it has now been used by more than 2,000 teachers in over 30 countries around the world!
Through working with ballet teachers and studio owners around the world, Ashley has come to realize a few things: Teachers and studio owners need fun and engaging curriculums for their preschool and young dancer programs. But they also need curriculums that take child development into account and foster a love for learning and strong technique.
What Ashley loves most about Children's Dance Method is how far its reach has stretched—especially its two most popular programs: Once Upon a Ballet and Little Dancer. Going from teaching a few ballet classes a week, to running a program that helps thousands of teachers and studios bring joy and imagination of young dancers around the world has been quite the journey!
In addition to running Children's Dance Method, Ashley is an ABT® Certified Teacher. She has completed the ABT® Teacher Training Intensive in Primary through Level 7 of the ABT® National Training Curriculum. She has also completed the Bolshoi Ballet Academy's teacher training courses, completing certification in Pre-Primary through Level 4. Finally, she has completed Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet's teacher training workshop.
CDM Contributing Teacher
Autumn Cantrell
Having grown up with a mother who was a dance teacher and studio owner, Autumn’s own dance journey began at a young age. By fourteen she was dancing every day, and by seventeen she was teaching students. “I love dance so much, there wasn’t really anything else I could see myself doing,” Autumn told us. With a combined love for ballet and teaching, Autumn opened a dance studio in 2016. She started small, teaching in a garage with only a handful of students and facing mountainlike obstacles. But with tremendous hard work, she grew her studio and experienced exponential growth within just three years of business.
Autumn discovered CDM's curriculums and lesson plans in 2018, and they completely changed the way she taught young dancers for the better. Now going into her seventh year, she attributes the success of her preschool and kindergarten ballet programs to CDM's curriculums and imaginative lesson plans. Knowing that the right teacher can unlock potential and change someone’s life forever, she strives to teach each class with intention and attention to detail, to pass on real technique in a motivating and positive way so students walk away from class having achieved something each week. Her desire is to unlock for each student the same heartfelt joy, purpose, and passion for life that dance unlocked for her.
CDM Contributing Teacher
Kristin Mueller
Kristin started dancing at age four at a recreational studio in Deerfield, Wisconsin. She began with ballet, but eventually expanded to all dance forms. After 14 years at her dance studio, she attended the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where she received professional training in Ballet, Modern, Jazz, Body Movement, and African Dance.
Being creative and imaginative in dance has been integral in Kristin’s teaching technique and the evolution of her curriculum in the classroom. She always strives to engage every student's learning style by utilizing descriptive imagery, guided improvisation, props, and developmentally appropriate motor skill growth. Kristin believes that the vulnerability shown for this type of teaching is the gift that children yearn for, and she wants her students to know that dance is their safe place, a place to express who they are.
Kristin is the mother of three children: Jackson, Adleigh, and Isla. She met her husband Camden in 2006 at her childhood dance studio, and they have been together ever since. Recently, the family decided to make their life goal come to fruition and move from the Midwest to the South. In Georgia, Kristin teaches at the Savannah Cultural Arts Center and Savannah Dance Company. She is honored to be a CDM Contributing Teacher, knowing that she is able to express her creativity while teachers all around the world are bringing magic into their classrooms.
CDM Contributing Teacher
Lee Ann Stehle
Lee Ann began dancing at the age of four and fell in love with the art form early on. She has performed in many productions including Coppelia, Peter and the Wolf, and annual productions of The Nutcracker with Western Arkansas Ballet and The Moscow Ballet. In her teens she began competing in dance competitions and pageants which gave her insight into what makes entertainment and choreography exciting to perform and watch.
Lee Ann began teaching at 18. At 19, alongside being on staff at two local studios, she created a dance program at a local Montessori school in Arkansas. Later on in her career, Lee Ann took over a faith-based dance and gymnastics studio in Northwest Florida. She has been a creative and administrative assistant, choreographer, and instructor throughout her career. She is excited to now add curriculum content contributor to her list of dance based employment.
Lee Ann stays current by continuing her education through courses, conventions, and workshops. She has taught a number of styles, from ballet, to jazz and pointe.
Autumn is a ballet instructor, studio owner, and CDM Contributing Teacher with a passion for teaching creatively and intentionally to help children experience the pure joy and self-discovery that dance imparts. From the beginning, dance has had an immensely positive impact on her life, opening a world of beauty in motion and building the key characteristics that make her a business owner today.
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