Drama is known to be very creative, children have the chance to dive into a new character, learn or even create a background for these characters. For many people, they believe drama only benefits the creative side – helping a child nourish their imagination. And, yes, drama does do this but it also benefits children in many other ways and helping them in everyday life.
In this blog, we will discuss how and why drama is a good activity for a child to do.
Social skills
Being able to socialise is a vital skill that everyone needs, as being able to communicate is how people can move from one step to another in their life. This is why it’s important for children to develop this skill from a young as it will make their life slightly easier.
There are different ways that a drama club does this.
Confidence
Improving a child’s confidence level helps them develop their social skills because, with no confidence, people will shy away from talking to others. In the world of acting, any child is welcomed – it doesn’t matter if they are quiet, as drama is the place for them to grow and become more outgoing than before.
Most drama clubs do different activities to help a child speak clearer with confidence. For example, improv, some people might dislike this due to the worry of thinking of something on the spot and acting without a script. But the truth is, this helps children understand that daily life is filled with improv. Knowing this, develops confidence in children, as not only does it help them have the strength to speak up for themselves, but they will be able to do this in a proud and clear way.
Empathy
Drama is filled with different characters for a child to explore, with each character they’ll learn new backgrounds – what does this character like? What are they scared of? And why? All crucial information to help the child act as this character in the best way possible.
At a younger age, many children believe everyone’s life is the same as theirs when most of us know that this is not true. Drama is the perfect way to ease children to understand that not everyone has the same life as them, without forcing it on them. As children learn the ins and outs of each of their characters, they’ll start to understand that their friends have different lives as well.
All of this helps a child with empathy – the ability to understand how someone feels.
Both confidence and empathy are needed for a child to grow their social skills. Confidence helps them have faith within themselves, making it easier to communicate with friends and family. Whereas empathy allows the child to register how someone is feeling and with that, sometimes the tone of the communication might have to change.
With this, children’s social skills will heighten – making it easier for them at school and when they are adults in the working world.
Improving their education
In life, education is key, it normally helps with landing a successful job – something that every parent wants for their child. The truth is, drama is known to help children to succeed highly in their educational years. James S. Catterall, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, did a study on the arts and how it affects a child’s education. Here, he found out that children who participated in drama achieved highly in the classroom.
How does a drama club do this?
Organisation skills
It’s important for anyone to be organised, we don’t mean having a tidy desk – although that is vital as well, we mean that drama helps a child organise how to get from one point to another.
During a child’s educational years, students take part in a number of tests and exams. No matter how small or big these tests are, it is important for a student to organise the steps to achieve the grade that they want or need.
When it comes to drama, there are normally different shows that take place throughout the year, some bigger than the others. With each of these shows, drama teachers set deadlines, for example, off-script for scene one. This means the child has to learn their lines in time before the deadline, to do this, they’ll have to plan to go over the words every day.
This helps children to be able to visualise the path from point A to point B. When the time comes to their exam period, they will understand the importance of deadlines and have set up a plan to achieve their grade.
Focusing
This skill is extremely useful when it comes to education and drama can drive a child to be able to focus for a period of time. A drama club helps children learn the key to focusing through the practice of learning lines. Children need to focus when they do this and the more times they go through this system the more they develop the skill of focusing.
Being able to focus helps children’s memories. When they are revising over their lines they have to remember them, this is vital to do when revising for tests at school.
Drama clubs open the doors to children being able to remember crucial information by helping them be able to focus on what they need to learn without being distracted.
Mental health
Through the past few years, more and more people are trying to fight the stigma that comes with mental health. They do this by educating people that it is alright to talk to others when they feel like it. Drama helps children understand this from a young age, so when there comes a day and they do feel they need to talk, they will not hide away from it.
Trusting the team
In drama, every person has different parts but they need to work together to achieve the best show. As mentioned before, drama clubs do different activities, some of these help children to learn to trust. The importance of trust helps the group of actors to perform the best show ever, as they all have faith that everyone will be in the places they should be at the right time. But, trusting each other means children taking the chance to talk to their team if needed.
With trust, children learn to feel more comfortable talking to other people to improve their mental health. This is good, as positive mental health is something that is needed for a person to work hard and be patient. With positive mental health, children are more likely to succeed in different areas of life all due to drama.
All of this sounds fantastic, any parent would want their children to have great social skills, to do well at school and feel comfortable talking to others to keep their mental health in a positive way. What would make it even more perfect is if parents could receive photos of their children having fun at their drama club but also learning all of these useful skills.
Luckily for you, the Splento App is just the product a person can use to have an insight into the world of acting. With the Splento App, a drama club will be able to take pictures of children learning their lines, doing improv and being on the stage during rehearsal and send it off to the parents.
This highly secure app makes sure the photos only go to the parents if their child is in it.
Do you want to be able to see all the exciting activities your child does at drama as they learn all of these useful skills? Then why not read Exploring the Splento App for parents to understand more about what this app can do for you.
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