We had a dance party in the studio this week! Launching our new beginners program Dancely.™ Downunder!
Talking to the parents after the classes, it got me thinking about WHY you join your children up for dance classes…we know it’s good for them…but WHY!? Here are some thoughts and ideas from the conversations I had with the parents about the benefits of dance classes for child development. Can you think of any others? I’d love to know your thoughts, what benefits do you/your child get from dance classes?…send us a message 🙂
MAKING NEW FRIENDS & HAVING NEW EXPERIENCES
There’s no doubt that dance classes are fun – but what makes them even more fun is sharing new experiences with other children!
The culture at RSD is a fun and safe environment where the children make new friends – even at the first class. And as these dancers grow older, and they share more dancing experiences together, their friendships and bonds grow stronger – creating lifelong friends ?
MASTERING ANXIETY & BUILDING RESILIENCE
Being able to think on your feet or quickly recover from minor mistakes are invaluable skills to have as in life. Children in dance classes get lots of opportunities to learn how to improve these skills! Committing to a weekly dance class encourages perseverance from week to week to improve and learn something new.
It’s no surprise that performing in front of an audience (or even for peers in class), can be a pretty nerve-wracking experience. It takes bravery to let loose and share your passion for dance! But the more opportunities your child has to share their love of dance the stronger and more confident they will feel! ?
CONFIDENCE AND SELF-ESTEEM
Before even getting on stage – in the dance studio, children get the opportunity to work collaboratively through teamwork. This can often mean working with people from different ages or backgrounds. Children build confidence because they get used to offering creative suggestions and opinions in a safe learning environment, and they quickly get a sense that they’re just as responsible for keeping the performance going as anyone else up there with them, so just as entitled to feel proud of the accomplishment. ?
EMPATHY AND COMPASSION
Another benefit of the RSD environment is that our dancers are nurtured to develop interpersonal skills like empathy and compassion, caring for their friends. The creativity they develop through performing can also transfer to their emotional creativity. It becomes necessary for children to step into another person’s shoes, but also because they watch their fellow dancers work just as hard as them to pull off the performance. ?
MEMORY AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT
As well as social and motor skills, dance can improve cognitive skills too. Learning & practicing dance routines helps children to develop their memory and recall, which can contribute to better test results in other, more academic areas of their lives. In fact, dancers often have more developed reading comprehension, writing, second languages, and even maths capability! ⭐️
With all these crucial benefits for child development, why wouldn’t you give the gift of dance to your child, or at least the opportunity to explore creative movement?!
