In my Bachelor's thesis, I wanted to prove that dance can be an effective learning method for children. I was also interested in how dance could be incorporated into learning in the early years. In order to test the efficacy of dance as a teaching method, I integrated a dance-based section into the kindergarten's main ongoing project aiming to familiarise children with their environment.
In the theoretical part of my thesis, I explain the art of dance and how it relates to other areas of the curriculum (language, mathematics, art, recreation, nature and society). Based on existing research, I explain the areas of the curriculum discussed in this dissertation.
The empirical section describes activities related to familiarising young children with their immediate surroundings and wider social environment. The activities included in the project are dance, creative movement and various visualisation exercises. The data I collected gave me a perspective on how dance could be an aid to young children's understanding of social concepts.
Through this dissertation I discovered how to introduce dance in the formative years, how to plan, conduct, and analyse the results of, a society oriented project. The children responded positively to the project and were very enthusiastic about all of the activities. I found that through dance they had a much better understanding of social concepts.
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