Psychological effects of music and dance education in 3-6 years children

ABSTRACT Dance and music has been used as healing, therapy and hypnosis since ancient times, and many kinds of dance and music have been sought for treatment. In this study, it is aimed to investigate the motivation, physical and psychological effects of dance education in 3-6 years children; thus to measure the motivation, physical and psychological development of children in this direction. Today, music and dance lessons are not necessarily required in the pre-school and primary school periods in the national education program. However, it's been seen that music and dance lessons supplement their development while completing the psychological development of 3-6 years children. In many private kindergartens, there have been basic music lessons in 3-6 years children and they are able to recognize their bodies, recognize their body language skills, and take dance lessons as a branch lesson to reflect their feelings. The reason for choosing this subject is due to the idea that supporting the development of children by dance and music lessons from pre-school period would give significant contributions to their academic achievement and psychological development. 87 students (40 male and 47 female) participated in the research. A checklist consisting of 27 questions was prepared and the first 4 items were applied only at the end of the First Term and the other 23 items were applied twice at the end of the First Semester (four months after the first lesson) and at the end of the Second Semester (seven months after the first lesson). The answers of four of the questions were collected with the help of parental observation and the others with the observation of the researcher. According to the findings obtained in this research; it's found that the dance lessons, in which dance therapy methods are adapted according to age groups, increase the total motivation, physical and psychological development of children in 3-6 years old children. The overall motivation, physical and psychological development of the children do not differ according to the gender (p>0,05) but the boys participate more significantly in the conversation in pre-class entry than the girls (p<0,05). The overall motivation, physical and psychological development of children differ according to age groups (p<0,05).