Play With A Purpose
Dance With A Destination
Fun With A Focus

The educational benefits of ARTS ALIVE! are abundant! Through our teaching, we explore all of the benefits listed below. ARTS ALIVE! teaches integrated arts- creative movement, dance and creative drama. No matter what the lesson plan/theme may be, we are incorporating ALL of these elements. Creative Movement is ARTS ALIVE!

Creative Movement, i.e. ARTS ALIVE!, provides children with an avenue to explore movement and music, stimulate imagination, release energy, develop locomotor skills and enhance creativity.

Developmentally appropriate Creative Movement activities involve the whole child:

• The child's desire for language
• The body's urge to move
• The brain's attention to patterns
• The ear's lead in initiating communication
• The voice's response to sounds
• Hand-eye and whole body coordination

Creative movement can be used to communicate an image, an idea, or a feeling. All children can benefit from Creative Movement, including children with communication, sensory, developmental or physical challenges. Creative Movement works with all personal learning styles. While using streamers to create waves in ARTS ALIVE!’s Wonderful World of Water, the children are listening to instructions to make the waves, following the instructions, watching an ARTS ALIVE! teacher model the action, creating motion, moving in pathways, moving their streamers in different levels, keeping their bodies in their own space while moving around other moving children, feeling confident, happy, and proud of their abilities . . . whew!! AMAZING CREATIVE MOVEMENT!!

• Increases and promotes Creativity
• Process-directed focus (as opposed to product-directed)
• Enhances the skills needed for Following Instructions
• Assists in development of Abstract Thinking

Movement stimulates cognitive learning. Research shows that the right hemisphere of the brain (the sensing and feeling side) functions through activities such as music, art, and creativity. The left hemisphere organizes sequential and logical skills such as language and speech. Both sides of the brain must be developed during the critical learning periods in early childhood because of the cross referencing that occurs.

When children are engaged in creative movement, they are involved in activities that will increase their memory and ability to communicate.

Music is a language, and children are oriented toward learning language. Music engages the brain while stimulating neural pathways associated with such higher forms of intelligence as abstract thinking, empathy,
and mathematics. Movement increases the amount of oxygen to the brain and therefore enhances the brain’s ability to learn.

Cross lateral movements prepares the brain to learn. These movements cross the midline and strengthen and prepare the brain for learning. In ARTS ALIVE!, we use cross lateral exercises, such as galloping in Houseful of Horses and dancing to The Twist in Dance in Your Pants, to help coordinate the right and left brain. With these exercises, students learn to cross the midline of their body, which helps the brain exchange information between its two hemispheres. This is helpful for spelling, writing, listening, reading, and comprehension.

Research has also shown that body movement, body positions, and gestures help children perceive concepts better and improve memory to help with their ability to count and perform some arithmetic functions.

 

• Confidence, Self Esteem, Experimentation
• Freedom & Independence
• Empathy
  
• Spontaneity
  
• Stress Relief

As children learn more and develop new skills, their self-esteem increases. When a child exclaims, “I did it!” or “I know that!” they are expressing the power they feel in their own competence. Children’s self-esteem is also enhanced through participation in activities where their contributions are valued..

Throughout every theme, ARTS ALIVE! teachers are setting children up to succeed by creating experiences that are positive.

When we ask children about their favorite food to eat in our Fantastic Fun with Food theme, every answer is correct and wonderful; there is no “wrong answer.” For instance, in the first week of an ARTS ALIVE! class, children are learning the information within the chosen theme. It is within the second class meeting that we ask questions about what we did the first week, knowing that we have set them up to succeed. All children can be excited, proud, and confident in their response to the music, movement, puppets, and props.

• Communication Skills
• Cooperation, Patience, Taking Turns, Sharing
• Language Development
• Non-competitive experiences
• Success-oriented experiences
• Spatial Awareness
• Team Building

Creative Movement encourages an interactive environment where children share space as they explore movement together. The possibility of creating movements together becomes more appealing. Experiences
in creative movement can help children respect the working space of others as they learn about “personal space” versus “shared space.”

Children learn to recognize, appreciate and respect differences in the people with whom they interact.

Studies have shown that movement associated with drama leads to improvements in adaptive social behavior. In ARTS ALIVE!’s Friends Forever theme, partner dancing, tickle brushes on friends, following the leader using the song Shadow Dancing and using streamers with partners gives the children many opportunities for cooperative play and team work.

• Strength & Agility
• Balance
• Coordination
• Cardiovascular Endurance
• Body Awareness
• Rhythm
• Flexibility

Creative Movement can clear the mind and help one become aware of their body. Body awareness is an inner sense of one’s muscles and balance as well as where one’s body is in space. Children who do not perceive the space of their own bodies may frequently misjudge distances or bump into things. Perception of space and body awareness improves coordination and balance. Creative Movement also helps with the development of motor skills and works with any learning style.

Creative Movement enhances movement development that occurs between ages two and seven. It is during this developmental period that locomotor skills (creeping, walking, jumping, leaping, etc.), non-locomotor skills (stretching, bending, twisting, shaking, etc.), and stability/balance skills especially begin to flourish. These skills are especially important for the development and improvement of flexibility, coordination, and strength.

When a child’s entire body is involved in exploring different aspects of Creative Movement, all senses are engaged.

Sensory awareness work leads to a greater understanding of one’s self and one’s surroundings.

It strengthens the imaginative powers. The kinesthetic sense increases as children literally feel the shapes and actions that their bodies are making. Visually, children respond to the images they see, as well as the images they create. The auditory sense is stimulated as children respond to sounds and music they make or hear. Tactile experiences include performing crab-walking, “swimming,” climbing, crawling, slithering, or dancing with a scarf. In our ARTS ALIVE!’s Growing Garden theme, the children are feeling the silky scarves as their leaves begin to grow, they see the colorful flowers as they begin to dance, smell the lavender scented “rain” as it comes down, hear the garden music, and “taste” with their imagination the wonderful peas they’ve grown.