Kids benefit from physical activity. Exercise develops muscles, reduces obesity risk, and offers kids opportunities to socialize. Several studies suggest that exercise can even help kids excel academically.
The same applies to dancing classes as well.
Dancing improves both physical and mental fitness. Researchers at Indiana University in Bloomington found that young children who danced for twenty minutes per day performed better on reading tests than kids who did not dance. This makes dancing classes an ideal after school activity.
Here’s how it helps:
Improved Focus:
Like other activities that require physical coordination, dancing helps kids pay attention in school. Because dance is an exercise in careful timing and deliberate movements, it challenges the mind to stay focused on complex tasks like reading and math.
Your memory is enhanced by having complex neural synapses. And you can create new neural pathways by learning something new like dance choreography.
Improved Memory:
Dancing also exercises the brain in ways that can improve memory. Researchers suspect this is because dance stimulates several brain regions that are involved in memory. Dance has been found to reduce dementia risk by 76%, according to a study conducted at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Increased Creativity:
Creativity has a concrete basis in the brain, and explaining creativity is a challenge because there are many definitions of it. Some people, for example, see creativity as thinking out of the box or an ability to solve problems. Still others define it in terms of innovation and imagination.
Dancing helps kids in all these ways—by challenging them to solve movement problems, motivating them to think beyond the traditional movements they already know, and encouraging them to use their imaginations when creating dances.
Reduces screen time:
Screen time is linked with obesity and lack of sleep. Kids who don’t exercise enough may end up with tons of screen time. Too much screen time can negatively affect children’s learning abilities. Dance can help combat that.
Improved Academic Performance:
Some research suggests that children who participate in dance classes also improve their academic performance. A study published in the journal Psychology of Music suggests that when elementary school children participated in dance classes, they experienced an increase in reading achievement.
Lifts Mood:
Dancing can make kids feel better about themselves, too. When kids embrace their creativity through dance or other kinds of artistic expression, they gain confidence in their abilities and even experience improvements in self-esteem. This is important for kids because self-esteem can influence how well kids learn.
Most people experience improved self-esteem from dancing, but a study in the journal Psychology of Music suggests that it’s especially helpful for children with learning disabilities. When these students took private dance lessons for ten weeks, they showed significant improvement in their cognitive skills and reading comprehension.
Dance Builds Empathy:
One of the most powerful benefits of dance is that it can help kids develop greater empathy. A study on children’s responses to choreography found that when they created dances for other people, they were more likely to consider their audiences’ perspectives.
Reduce Stress:
Researchers have found that academic stress can reduce well-being and increase anxiety and depression. Dancing can help your kids stay calm. While dancing, kids’ heart rates and respiration levels increase—just like when they exercise. But unlike running or playing a sport, dance doesn’t cause muscle fatigue. Instead of tiring out the body, it energizes it.
And lastly, dance classes teach students to pay attention to their teacher and follow directions. It is a great skill to learn how to listen carefully and follow directions, which will improve academic performance.
Dance has been shown to improve students’ academic performance in a variety of ways, including reducing stress and increasing concentration. In this blog post we have explored the benefits that dance can provide your child when they are in school. We hope you find these insights useful as you continue to make decisions about how to best support your children’s education at home or in class!
