What are The Benefits of Drama & Play
1. Drama builds confidence
The most obvious Benefit of Drama classes is building confidence. Even the shyest of children take just a few weeks to gently build up their self-esteem and before long they are confident enough to take a full and active part in sessions. A few weeks or persistence is all it takes.
2. Drama helps concentration
In every session, children are encouraged to listen to each other’s ideas and thoughts and to take turns. These activities allow children to recognise the value of concentration; a skill that is vital in the world outside their home.
3. Drama helps develop language and communication skills
Learning new songs, playing new games and participating in pretend play (when children must take on the language of the role they are playing), all contribute to a child’s developing vocabulary. They are encouraged to express themselves both verbally and through facial expression and body language; the key to making them better communicators.
4. Drama encourages children to cooperate
Every activity in Pyjama Drama, from playing drama games to improvisation to singing together, requires cooperation. Children quickly realise that to get the best out of sessions, cooperation is a much-needed skill!
5. Drama supports numeracy skills
In Step One Drama classes for preschoolers, children don’t ever guess they are learning. Counting the number of beats in a song, counting the number of stars on a camping trip or working out how many eggs to put in a cake are just a few examples of how being involved in a drama can help to develop essential numeracy skills.
6. Drama helps children to understand the world around them
We explore a range of different themes and introduce children to a variety of real and imaginary situations each week, sparking their interest in the world in which they live and making them more inquisitive (and therefore more interesting!) little people.
7. Drama develops emotional intelligence
By encouraging children to ‘act out’ a range of emotions in the safe and supportive environment of a Pyjama Drama class, children are better able to understand their feelings and develop empathy for others.
8. Drama assists physical development
This is something that most people don’t associate as a benefit of drama classes! In each session, we practice mime, create simple movement sequences and play drama games – all designed to help children gain mastery over their growing bodies. Drama classes are a great choice for children to stay fit and healthy when they are not interested in sport.
9. Drama develops creativity
Creative people can view things in new ways and from different perspectives. They can think on their feet and generate new ideas. Our child-led approach to improvisation and pretend play encourages the development of creativity as children lead the direction of the drama themselves, come up with solutions to problems in role, and respond imaginatively to a range of pretend situations.
10. Drama nurtures friendships
By its very nature drama can create strong bonds between children as they laugh, learn and grow together week after week after week! Many of our past pupils are still friends with each other and several have gone on to create theatre companies together. We even have a facebook group for alumni to keep in touch.
- Speech and drama improves your public speaking skills. Forcing yourself to speak in front of people will help you get better at it! Volume, enunciation, pitch, inflection – they come in handy in a professional setting.
- You learn the value of teamwork. In a Drama environment, you learn to compromise and collaborate with many different kinds of people. Drama and Theatre people know — every individual is valuable, not just the stars.
- You’ll gain confidence. The Drama environment is unique in that it supports and encourages participants to be weird and try new things, even if you make a fool of yourself. Learning to shed your ego is a skill few people are willing to commit to in the real world. You will find more success when you are conditioned to embarrass yourself a little to find it.
- It is a surefire way of gaining reading skills. The great thing about Drama is that one piece of text can be interpreted in infinite ways. You will find new ways to approach analysis because you get to act it out instead of just reading it at a desk. Not to mention, there’s nothing like “have this memorised by next week” that will force you to improve your reading skills fast.
- You’ll gain a higher appreciation of the written (and spoken) word. Theatre has informed culture all over the world throughout history. Studying it exposes you to many great works of literature and ideas you may not otherwise encounter. Even if you don’t end up pursuing it for the rest of your life, there are few directions in life you can take that haven’t been influenced by the artform.
- Your memorisation skills will be on point. It’s a lot more than just remembering words and actions. The memorisation tricks you teach yourself, and the way you learn to multitask on stage can inform the ways you study, work, and organize your tasks and actions. on in life.
To enrol your child for our Speech & Drama classes for Children, contact the Betty Ann Norton Theatre School by clicking here