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5 Ways Arts Education Boosts Your Child’s Development

Raising healthy, happy children is your first priority, and providing them with ways to learn and grow whilst having fun is a part of that all-important role.

Creative hobbies and activities like dancing, singing, playing instruments, acting, storytelling, painting, drawing, and more are activities children often gravitate to naturally, as they’re fun to learn and offer an opportunity for self-expression. There’s plenty to love about their natural affinity to the arts, as science has correlated arts education with a number of important developmental benefits for kids.

The important cross-disciplinary role of the fine arts is one of the central tenets of World Art Day, which will take place this 15th April. The date of the event was chosen to commemorate the birth of Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci, an ideal representation of this concept, whose work in architecture and art has been foundational in today’s mathematics, science, architecture, and engineering concepts.

In honor of World Art Day, here are five studies explaining how arts education can boost your child’s development:

A naturalistic study of the links between literacy development and theater-style play in five year old children associated the play style with opportunities for creative self-expression and use of the imagination. [1]
Self esteem and self efficacy can be boosted by arts education, per a study on disadvantaged teens in which four months of guitar lessons resulted in improvements in both areas when compared to peers. [2]
A study of adolescent participation in dance education correlated the practice with boosts to tolerance of others, persistence, and confidence. [3]
After participating in an eight week dance program, preschool children demonstrated noteworthy gains in both balance and sensory-motor synchronization when compared to non-participant peers. [4]
When the relationship between arts participation and academic outcomes was assessed in a group of middle and high school students, those with high levels of arts education outscored their peers on every measure of academic skill. [5]