What Can You Do to Help a Child Develop Holistically?
Holistic education is about the development of a child in the following dimensions:
To help ensure a child’s holistic development, one way is to let the child participate in a variety of activities (facilitated by parents, early learning centre, community, dance studio or other organisations and institutions).
With that variety, children can gain rich experiences and get exposed to different environments and practices. This can help them with their brain development especially in their early years where brain development is the fastest.
How children can gain a variety of experiences
Thankfully, modern early childhood education is now more geared towards holistic development. For example, in the Early Years Learning Framework (now adopted by most early learning centres), there’s a special emphasis on playtime and extra-curricular activities. As a result, children gain a wide variety of experiences (instead of just staying inside a classroom).
Aside from early learning centres, there are also other places that support holistic development (or that further add to children’s experiences and learning). For example, dance studios and performing arts classes can help children with their physical, mental and social development.
Dancing and holistic development
Dancing is a good physical exercise and it also helps children develop their coordination, balance and spatial awareness. Dancing is also a good way for children to better develop their social skills especially when the practices and performances are in groups.
Through group and individual performances in front of a crowd (especially overseas tours and performances), children can also gain confidence and expand their comfort zone. It will be a valuable experience because they can get used to facing the crowd. In the future, they will feel confident in their actions even if seen by many (this is critical in delivering an excellent performance).
Dancing is just one way for children to expand their comfort zone and accelerate their learning and development. Other performing arts classes and extra-curricular activities are also important. The key here is to let children explore at an early age so that they will become more comfortable in a variety of and even unfamiliar situations in the future.