As parents, we would want our children to have the best. We would do everything we can just so we could send them to school for them to have a good and proper education. They learn several things in school like alphabets, counting, drawing, reading, and such. However, there are other important things that our children can learn in school and it is performing arts. One platform for children to hone their speech and drama skills is at learning center such as Julia Gabriel. The benefits of performing arts such as drama would be our focus in this article.
To start, Washington Christian Academy will first share to us five great ways performing arts can benefit your child.
5 Great Ways Performing Arts Can Benefit Your Child
If your child has a busy academic schedule, enrolling them in performing arts may seem to come down the bottom of the priority list.
But there are many reasons why performing arts should play a key role your child’s education, be it in school or as an extra curricular activity. In many studies, researchers are now linking involvement in the arts to better child development and higher student achievement.
HIGHER ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT
Studies such as this report from the Arts Education Partnership suggest schoolchildren exposed to drama, music and dance are more proficient in reading, writing and math. In countries with the highest rankings in math and science, such as Japan, Hungary and the Netherlands, arts and music education form a mandatory part of the school curriculum. Children also learn to take instruction from adults and respect authority. Read more here.
According to the article, performing arts can make your children build up confidence and self-presentation. Exposing your children to early activities which involve performing arts can really boost their confidence as they will be interacting with people a lot. Now, let us proceed to discussing the benefits of dramatic play. Let us read about it in Sarah Punkoney’s article below.
THE INCREDIBLE BENEFITS OF DRAMATIC PLAY
WHAT IS DRAMATIC PLAY?
Dramatic play is s a type of play where children assign and accept roles and act them out. It’s pretending to be someone or something else. Someone different and new like a supervillain, or someone well known and familiar like mom. Sometimes children take on real-world roles, other times they take on fantasy roles. Either way, it is play that involves breaking down the barriers of reality and results in serious and natural learning.
EXAMPLES OF DRAMATIC PLAY
- a child who pretends to feed and rock a doll to sleep
- a child who pretends to fix a leaky faucet in the play kitchen
- a child who pretends to be Spot the dog and plays fetch
- a child who stirs counting bears in a bowl to make bear soup Read more here.
So given above is a whole lot of information about dramatic play. We have the definition of dramatic play, some examples, its types, the benefits it can give, and how you could encourage dramatic play. For more reasons on why drama is good for children, let us also read Lucy’s article below.
Why is drama good for children?
As Principal of a drama school, I’m asked this question a lot. And I could write a book on the many reasons why drama is so excellent – not just good ? for children. But for this blog post, I’ll focus on just one benefit; and that’s the improvement drama can make to a child’s oral communication.
At school, there’s an emphasis on children learning to read and write and rightly so, as these are fundamental skills. But where’s the interest in how well a child is communicating and how clearly and confidently they are speaking? If you consider how much we communicate orally, interacting with friends, family, colleagues and strangers, then it seems odd that more emphasis isn’t put on this in schools. Read more here.
That one benefit discussed above is that drama can help improve children’s communication skills. It will teach them how to speak clearly and loudly. It will also train them on having proper eye contact with the audience while speaking in front of people. These simple things are important and it will be good for children to learn them early as it will be useful for them in their future schooling and careers as well.