Top 4 Benefits of Dance for Kids

Considering adding dance to your son or daughter's weekly routine?  Check out these top reasons you should get them involved today!  The benefits of dance carry outside the studio and into their academic and social lives. 

1. Improves Memory

Dance involves learning new positions, poses, and sequences.  Students in dance learn each week by recapping what they have learned previously and adding new skills and combinations to their class routine.  Whether your dancer is just a beginner or is a competitive athlete, dancers brains are challenged each class which improves memory outside the dance room. 

2.  Learn to Take Direction (and Take Turns)

Students in dance benefit from specialized instruction.  Dance teachers are trained to demonstrate through motions, words, and song, the desired movements the child should imitate.  Dance students must pay close attention to the teacher to be able to learn new moves.  In addition, dancers frequently take turns moving across the floor.  Taking turns in the dance room leads to better social skills in the classroom. 

3. Increases Cognitive Development

A moving child is a learning child.  Students in dance learn to transfer their weight from side to side, cross the midline, spin in circles, and encourage their vestibular systems to get a work out in themselves.  When dance students make their entire brain work, this stimulates their cognitive development

4.  Improves Physical Fitness

Finally, dance provides many physical benefits including increased strength, flexibility, and balance.  Students learn to carry their own weight gracefully.  The motions repeated in dance also help improve posture and low muscle tone. Let's not forget that students in dance rarely recognize the physical benefits they are receiving from it, but are instead just having fun!