Cognitive Benefits

A child’ cognitive development is not only limited to forming an artistic viewpoint. Dance therapy also helps children learn problem solving skills, as well as promoting a joy of learning. Even more, it gives them a chance to be creative. A child has the opportunity to explore solutions to a problem through their own bodies (Bergmann, “Creative Dance” 162). It shows children that there are many ways to solve a problem and allows them to understand that a problem may have many different meanings. Children also learn how to accept or reject information received from others when solving a problem. The self-exploration of a problem inspires a joy of learning by using the concept of “discovery learning”. Discovery learning is learning in which a “teacher presents students with opportunities for learning” where “skills are not taught directly” (Doorlag 94). Children are allowed to learn through creative dance, which they enjoy more than learning from a book because they get up and move. In Colla J. MacDonald’s article “Creative Dance in Elementary Schools: A Theoretical and Practical Justification”, one of the teachers she interviewed stated that the “children tremendously enjoyed the challenge of simultaneously solving problems, collaborating and socializing with their peers, and expressing themselves physically” (MacDonald 439). Furthermore, it gives the children a chance to use their artistic expression and their creativity. They do this by giving a dance form to their feelings evoked by a song, an object, or a thought. A child creates a dance that explains his or her feelings or that tells a story through the child's spontaneous choreography.