What Makes Our Curriculums Different?
A Fresh, New Approach to Teaching Children’s Dance Classes
Teach a developmentally appropriate curriculum that actually engages your students.
WANT SAMPLES OF OUR CURRICULUMS?
“Once Upon a Ballet has been perfect for me! The lesson plans have been so easy for me to adapt to my own style of teaching.”
- Diana L.
CLICK ON A CURRICULUM BELOW TO LEARN MORE
Last Chance to Buy:
January 9
Designed for children ages 1.5 to 5, it’s the perfect way to bring creativity, movement, and joy to your classroom or home.
With 40 weeks of lesson plans, music playlists, and fun extras, this curriculum is packed with 20 beloved nursery rhymes like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Humpty Dumpty, and Baa Baa Black Sheep.
CREATIVE DANCE
BALLET
AGES 1.5-3 / 3-5
40 WEEKS OF LESSONS
FOR EACH AGE GROUP
LIFETIME LICENSE
ONE-TIME PAYMENT
Last Chance to Buy:
January 23
This curriculum is perfect for introducing children to the magic of movement while nurturing their love for the Hundred Acre Wood and its delightful characters.
Bring the enchanting world of Winnie-the-Pooh to life with our Winnie-the-Pooh Dance Curriculum—a complete year-long program designed for toddlers and preschoolers ages 1.5 to 5. Each month, your little ones will explore a new dance inspired by A.A. Milne's beloved stories, with easy-to-follow lesson plans, music playlists, and fun extras.
CREATIVE DANCE
BALLET
AGES 1.5-3 / 3-5
12 MONTHS OF LESSONS
FOR EACH AGE GROUP
LIFETIME LICENSE
ONE-TIME PAYMENT
Last Chance to Buy:
February 6
This beautiful children’s dance curriculum explores the wonders of nature as its dance class themes—starting with the night sky!
Teach dance to tots through early elementary with dance class themes like starry night, changing leaves, woodland creatures, moon phases, winter birds, evergreen forests, maple sugar, seeds and sprouts, caterpillars and butterflies, busy bees, sharks in the reef, and sunny seashores.
CREATIVE DANCE
BALLET / CONTEMPORARY
AGES 1.5-3 / 3-5 / 5-7
12 MONTHS OF LESSONS
FOR EACH AGE GROUP
LIFETIME LICENSE
NO ADDITIONAL FEES
Want to meet at an ice cream shop? Let’s have a teddy bear picnic! Let’s have an adventure with pirates and mermaids. Or maybe we’ll journey to outer space!
Teach a variety of dance forms to your tots through children’s dance classes. Our Little Dancer Curriculum gives you two full years worth of classes for each age group and dance form, all centered around the most fun themes for children.
CREATIVE DANCE / BALLET
TAP / JAZZ / CONTEMPORARY
AGES 1.5-3 / 3-5 / 5-7
24 MONTHS OF LESSONS
FOR EACH AGE GROUP
VIDEO DEMONSTRATIONS
LIFETIME LICENSE
NO ADDITIONAL FEES
Introduce dance to your your littlest students through the magic of fairy tale stories.
CREATIVE DANCE
BALLET / TAP / JAZZ
AGES 1.5-3 / 3-5 / 5-7
24 MONTHS OF LESSONS
FOR EACH AGE GROUP
VIDEO DEMONSTRATIONS
LIFETIME LICENSE
ONE-TIME PAYMENT
This toddler and preschool acro dance curriculum introduces pre-acro skills through imaginative stories and themes.
Each month, you’ll take your students on an all-new acro adventure as they stretch and work on coordination and preparatory skills for bridges, handstands, forward rolls, and cartwheels. Pretend to perform in a traveling circus, play at the park, visit the zoo, or go back in time to the land of dinosaurs!
PRE-ACRO DANCE
CREATIVE DANCE
AGES 1.5-3 / 3-5
9 MONTHS OF LESSONS
FOR EACH AGE GROUP
LIFETIME LICENSE
ONE-TIME PAYMENT
Introduce ballet to ages 7+ through classical ballet stories and ballet history.
BALLET / BALLET HISTORY
PRE-POINTE / CONDITIONING
AGES 7-9 / 8-10 / 9-11 / 10-12
24 MONTHS OF LESSONS
FOR EACH AGE GROUP
VIDEO DEMONSTRATIONS
LIFETIME LICENSE
ONE-TIME PAYMENT
Introduce modern and contemporary dance through 20th century modern dance artists.
MODERN / CONTEMPORARY
CONDITIONING
AGES 7-10 / 9-12
12 MONTHS OF LESSONS
FOR EACH AGE GROUP
VIDEO DEMONSTRATIONS
LIFETIME LICENSE
ONE-TIME PAYMENT
Meet the Creators
Ashley Hartford
Founder + Director of Once Upon a Ballet
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 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 teaching guides and story-based ballet lesson plans. Once Upon a Ballet 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. She found it hard to find all of that in a single program or curriculum, which is why she created Once Upon a Ballet.
What Ashley loves most about Once Upon a Ballet is how far its reach has stretched. From teaching just a few ballet classes a week, to running a program that helps teachers and studios bring joy and imagination to thousands of young dancers around the world, Ashley’s journey has been one of creativity, expression, and joy. “To all of you who use any part of Once Upon a Ballet, whether it's our curriculums, our course, our membership, or our studio licensing—thank you! Thank you for making this possible, and thank you for all that you do for your students. You make such a difference in their lives and they are truly blessed to have you.”
Autumn Cantrell
Once Upon a Ballet Contributing Teacher
Autumn is a ballet instructor, studio owner, and Contributing OUB 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.
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 OUB’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 OUB’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.
Kristin Mueller
Once Upon a Ballet Contributing Teacher
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 have become a contributor at Once Upon A Ballet this year, knowing that she is able to express her creativity while teachers all around the world are bringing magic into their classrooms.
Lee Ann Stehle
Once Upon a Ballet Contributing Teacher
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.