The benefits of being preschool performing arts lessons are wide ranging. Aside from helping them develop foundation skills in music, dance and drama, educational based performing arts lessons will also help your child gain many skills that will be useful for them as they prepare for formal schooling.
Music
Learning and participating in musical activities helps preschoolers to develop their listening skills which is vital for language accusation and reading. The ability to be able to distinguish between sounds is one of the most critical skills needed to be able to be able to decipher written language. learning the difference between high and low sound, different sounding instruments and even being able to identify different rhythmic elements help prepare students to become good readers both of music and of language.
Music is also full of patterns and when children are immersed in musical listening and creating they begin to identify what comes next, or which sections of music are a repeat or are different, helping them to understand patterns and sequences in readiness for maths at school.
“Children who experienced more frequent parent-child music activity at two to three years showed stronger vocabulary and numeracy skills, more prosocial skills and stronger abilities to regulate their own attention and emotion at four to five years old,” Professor Barrett University Queensland
Australian Research Council funded study titled Being and becoming musical: towards a cultural ecological model of early music development.
Dance
Dance teachers preschoolers how their body moves through space and how to control their bodies movements. You may just see your child skipping and jumping etc but what is happening to children who take dance lessons is the ability to take those movements and to control them so that their body is able to create each movement beautifully to the music. The ability to be able to control ones body helps preschoolers learn the skills they need to be able to sit and listen during classes when they enter kindergarten. Being able to master sitting is critical to being able to focus and learn in a classroom environment. Through dance children are learning to control the muscles that will help them to sit, stand and move.
It affects everything from their capacity to sit up for along periods of time, to holding a pencil, to learning social skills to regulating their emotions…..It seems there are some seriously important reasons why your young child (under 5) needs to be able to jump, skip, catch, hop, balance, throw or kick! – Maggie Dent on Movement
The magic of movement still really matters in our digital world – Maggie Dent
Drama
There is a very big focus on teaching young children things like reading and maths to help give them a leg up in school, right? However it is just s important for children to enter their school years having good emotional intelligence. Unlike anything else the act of playing pretend is one of the strongest ways for children to develop their emotional empathy. Pretending to be a character in a story encourages children to think about the characters emotions and thoughts and teaches them to use empathy as they take on the role. Developing empathy is the best way to help children to grow strong positive relationships with people
because dramatic arts like acting are all about recreating emotions, they’re an ideal way to help kids pump up these all-important skills
7 ways for kids to learn empathy through acting – Amber Ankowski
The ‘Little Adventures’ performing arts program at Hope Performing Arts centre is designed to nurture preschoolers creative and thinking skills in a joyful environment that supports the development of the whole child. find out more by clicking the link below