High School Ideas For Little Kid Cheer Camp?

[brennanez99]

Hey everyone! During the summer, my school's squad hosts a week-long day camp for rising K-5 students at our school. We usually divide them into kindergarten and 1st, and 2nd-5th teams with 1-2 "big" cheerleaders to be with each team. We teach them a cheer, short dance, and incorporate a stunt that they all perform for parents on the last day.

Any ideas for this camp (regarding stunts, team ideas,dance)? Ideally the stunts would be veeerrry simple level 1 stunts (below prep level). Also, has anyone had experience with having kids color bows? The idea came up that each kid would get to color their own white bow to take home with them.

Thank you for your help! :)


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[alexacheer2010]

I helped with a Girl Scout troop and had them color bows for a cheerleading day and they loved it! I just bought a bunch of white grosgrain (spelling?) ribbon and tied them around pony tail holders. We used fabric markers. For teaching cheers, at my school we had some girls stand in front of a bunch of them then some of us stood in the middle and some on the sides. It's always helpful to have a lot of examples for the learners to look at.


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[INeverStopCheering]

Make sure you take breaks to play games and use games to help teach. Simon says is a great way to teach beginning cheerleaders motions. You all have surely been to a camp at some point in life, think about the games you liked as a kid. Even silly things like four corners or seven up can be fun.

Also make sure to teach good and proper technique and enforce it. Today's campers could be tomorrow's cheerleaders and bad habits are hard to break

 

[Velchs]

Teach a jump or two?

Some fun games. Ships and sailors is always fun but it's just a game


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[MHSCheercoach]

As a coach, I always have hated the little cheer clinic, perhaps it's the idea of me being in charge of 60 little girls as some of my past cheerleaders have been clueless as to what to do and how to teach. Anyways, this is how we do ours (which is only 2 days hour and half each day):

Start with a game (little sally walker, Goin to Kentucky)
Skill clinic (as a large group) - I assigned two or three big cheerleaders to teach a skill (motion drill, jumps, sparkle, stunts)
Break into groups- I split ours K&1st, 2nd & 3rd, 4th & 5th. Teach two sidelines (different in each group).
Drink Break-More games (Ships and Sailors usually)
Skill Clinic (as a large group)- same as before but different topic.
Break into groups- Teach dance
Large Group-cheer taught. I usually stand on the stage with my two best cheerleaders and we teach the group cheer together.
Snack time and games if time permits (In the past we have done a craft, decorate paper megaphones, make a large banner that's hung up for the game they perform at, or even group pictures and have them sign the poster boards and hang those up)

Second Day: Same schedule. We keep the cheer simple, but include a jump in it. Dance is simple, cute, and sassy. We usually do doggy sits, knee sits, or double thigh stands as stunts. Last year I had a good older group and we had a prep as well (with a Big cheerleader backspotting to ensure safety). The stunt either goes in the cheer or the dance, depending on where we feel it fits best.

As a cheerleader, know your material, be overly enthusiastic about it, and be energetic! The kids love that and will remember you forever.

 

[emma_tuttle]

This could not have been a better time for this! (ETA: our kiddie camp is this week) My school(s) do(es) things like this: we start with a game, then we break into groups (this year happens to be pre-k-2, 3-6; it depends on how many from each grade level so it fluctuates from year to year) and we teach them 2 sideline cheers. If we have enough girls to go pre-k-1, 2&3, 4&5, then the "big girl" dance is 2-5; if it's like it is this year, we just keep groups as is. But we come up with 2 dances (bit of randomness: our little girls this year are dancing to Itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini and it the absolute cutest thing ever. We did a mock performance at the end of camp today and I can't get over how cute these girls are) and 2 sidelines per age group. Then we have our own routine. Then on the Saturday after, we do a performance in one of the towns within our "sports district" honestly, I went to every one of them I could when I was younger and now I'm teaching it. It's the coolest thing.

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[AScheer]

This could not have been a better time for this! (ETA: our kiddie camp is this week) My school(s) do(es) things like this: we start with a game, then we break into groups (this year happens to be pre-k-2, 3-6; it depends on how many from each grade level so it fluctuates from year to year) and we teach them 2 sideline cheers. If we have enough girls to go pre-k-1, 2&3, 4&5, then the "big girl" dance is 2-5; if it's like it is this year, we just keep groups as is. But we come up with 2 dances (bit of randomness: our little girls this year are dancing to Itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini and it the absolute cutest thing ever. We did a mock performance at the end of camp today and I can't get over how cute these girls are) and 2 sidelines per age group. Then we have our own routine. Then on the Saturday after, we do a performance in one of the towns within our "sports district" honestly, I went to every one of them I could when I was younger and now I'm teaching it. It's the coolest thing.

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Agreed!! Perfect timing ours is this week as well! Loving these craft ideas. We've done lots of kiddie camps, but this year is our first time to do a summer all day camp type thing, so this is great info!

 

[SmileyRyleigh]

how we did our kiddie clinic all 4 years I was in high school:
We separated them into "teams" before the clinic. (most girls cheered together on the youth football cheerleading teams, and we added other girls in to make it all even. most are around the same age unless they have a younger/older sibling they want to cheer for. then we put them on that team at parent's request. we have the lady who is over the youth football program help us put those together.
depending on each squad, we would combine two or three and we would end up with 5 "groups" and in those groups they would rotate from stunts, tumbling, jumps, dance, and cheers. We would make up 2 dances- one slow one for the younger girls, and one a little bit harder for the older girls. we always used kid songs- i think this year we used the shake it up theme song. every day we would have a snack, and play a game like little sally walker or duck duck goose or something fun like that.
on the last day of camp, we had a "jump off". in each group we chose 3 little girls to be in the jump off. each girl that made it to the jump off got a goody bag and we chose 3 winners who got bows. we also gave out bows for 3 other awards- most spirited, most improved, and best attitude- we did all this before the parent performance! the girls loved it! My freshman and sophomore year each HS girl was assigned a team and during snack time we would sit with our team and play games and at the end of the week we made our team little goody bags.
each day we did a different theme (these were last years)
monday (we didn't have a theme because it was the first day
tuesday- animal
wednesday-tacky
thursday-team color (each group got a color and they were supposed to wear it!)
friday-camp Tshirt day (we gave out a tshirt at the camp and they wore it for the parent performance)

I always loved kiddy camp because I love little kids and me and my mom coached one of the little kids teams for 4 years. They're so much fun and its so awesome to see little girls I've coached in all-star now and how much they've improved!!

 

[lisa G]

These can be challenging especially in smaller towns. last year our oldest group all cheer for the rec team and they acted like they knew everything and when asked to lear something they didnt know they absolutely refused claiming it was "too" hard. As they came off the UCA youth disk that wasn't the case, they just wanted to show everyone how good they were (they weren't). End the end i think they are rewarding for both the girl and the high school cheerleader. The key is to have a schedule and stick to it as best as possible but to allow for some changes based on the kids in the group.

Lastly we assign a "cheer buddy" to each of the girls. That buddy works with them throughout the day and during free time (lunch/breaks) they are in charge of making sure the girl is not left out and gets her break. This also allows the little ones to have someone they can go to if they are scared, tired, etc. and keeps they from having to disrupt everyone else. Now a year later when i see some of the little ones they ask where their "buddy" is and when can they see them again.

 

[cheer25mom]

One thing I would say is to be on the lookout for girls with experience and the maturity to help you out and use them in some fashion. Maybe allow them to demo some of the things they already know how to do. Also, don't be afraid to bump a younger child with lots of experience up a group. CP's biggest complaint with the cheer/dance camps that the local high schools put on for elementary kids was that there was no leveling by who had dance/ cheer experience and she often ended up bored. She quit going after the summer before 3rd grade because it was not a place she was learning anything useful.


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