Why Teach Creative Dance to Children?

Dance has often been overlooked as important and had not been included in elementary curriculum. Many educators and much of the general public believe that dance is a frivolous activity with no educational merits. Including arts in the elementary curriculum is important to the growth, self-esteem, and creative expression of children and is in no way trivial to their educational process. Dance should be an integral component of a comprehensive education for the same reasons that math, history, language arts, social studies, and science are essential to education. Each subject taught to students helps them to learn who they are, how they interact with others in the world, and how they fit into history. Providing these educational elements to students in a unique way, dance allows children to simultaneously move, think, and feel. In no other subject to students learn to express themselves and communicate through movement, a natural means of expression for children.

Dance is more than the exploring of different ways to make a shape or learning a series of steps to music; it is a way of moving that uses the body as an instrument of expression and communication. Through dance, students learn teamwork, focus, and improvisational skills. Dance awakens new perceptions in children which help them learn and think in new ways.

Children need to express and communicate their ideas and to be given the opportunity to make creative decisions, even at a young age. This decision making promotes self-esteem and independent thinking for children. Learning the movement of others helps expand the child's movement vocabulary while creating one's own movement will put the child in a teaching role and give her the chance for her voice to be heard. Giving the students the freedom of making choices within a structure encourages them to reach beyond what comes easy to them and use their imagination, thus allowing them to test their own personal boundaries.

Dance also enables students to better understand themselves and the world in which they live. Through the arts, teachers can often teach children to recognize the contribution of all cultures to the fabric of our society and increase the understanding of diversity and values of all people. Dance lends itself well to this task through learning traditional folk dances and creating new ones based on children's ideas. Dance also enhances skills of perception, observation, and concentration which will undoubtedly help students in all of their school subjects.

Educators need to recognize that their goal should be to encourage creative thinking in ALL subjects in the classroom, not to produce conformist thinking and promote regurgitation of facts alone. Dance is a perfect forum for creative and participatory learning. Since different students will excel and learn in different ways, it is crucial to include art in their educational experience. Learning new skills, learning academic subjects from a new approach, and having the space for expression and creativity in a supported environment will help to advance the self-esteem and independent thinking in the elementary school student.