Dance classes allow children to be more active, improve their motor skills, make friends and develop creative skills. Dance is also enormous fun while listening to all your favourite tunes.
At Jigsaw, students aged 7 – 18 take part in an hour of dance as part of their 3 hour performing arts session. The younger students aged 3 – 6 years do a more basic dance session for 30 minutes of their one and a half hour session. Watch our video to see inside a typical Jigsaw dance class:
Six ways dance classes can help benefit children’s development:
- Dance keeps both the body and the brain active, vital for growing children.
- Dance ensures you have healthy bones and muscles, improves your body strength and flexibility, and gives you great posture and balance.
- All extra curricular activities are great for making new friends. It’s great to have other friends outside school who share similar interests.
- Enjoying outside school activities such as dance can help students to reduce stress levels during exam time.
- The structure and discipline of a dance class can help children to focus in other areas of their life.
- Mastering new dance skills will give children a giant self esteem boost and build their confidence.
What happens in a Jigsaw dance class?
For 7 – 18 year-old students, each class starts with an aerobic warm-up, to get the heart rate going and warm up the body.
In the centre, students participate in floor work and learn new techniques.
Students have the opportunity to work individually or in pairs from the corner to master new steps.
Each class finishes with a fun routine. A routine would be worked on for a number of weeks so students have the opportunity to improve and feel more confident with their performance. This gives them great self esteem and a sense of achievement.
Dance teachers introduce students to a variety of styles from musical theatre to street dance and everything in between. We believe, it is important to use music that the students enjoy.
The 3 – 6 year-old students follow the same structure as the older students but at a very basic level. We use lots of imagery when teaching techniques and new steps to keep the exercises fun for the young students.
We use a lot of repetition to really build their confidence in dance.
Lots of Disney songs and light pop songs are used to keep the interest and energy going.
Read more about drama classes and singing classes at Jigsaw, or find a Jigsaw school near you below.
