Playfully: dance as a motor for language development
From 2021, Kober Kinderopvang and De Stilte are intensifying their collaboration in the two-year pilot project Spelendwijs. The project focuses on children aged 2–4 with a language delay. A balanced program including dance workshops at daycare centers, a visit to a dance performance at the Chassé Theater, and parental participation contributes to a better transition to primary education for toddlers and infants with developmental delays.
Dance as a means
Kober childcare and de Stilte have been collaborating on a project basis since 2015. With Spelendwijs, both parties are integrating dance education into the preschool curriculum in Breda. Evaluations from previous years have shown that children with language delays demonstrate greater understanding (of language) through movement than initially assumed. Children who don't speak Dutch do speak the language of dance. Dance bridges the gap between the nonverbal language of the body and the spoken word. Dance lessons help children cross boundaries, gain more self-confidence, and open up to expressing themselves through language.
The project reaches over 500 children and their parents, caregivers, and supervisors. Over a two-year period, 250 workshops, 15 performances, and two parent-teacher conferences will be organized.
Social return
In the first years of a child's life, the size of the brain grows exponentially. Every second, seven hundred new connections form in the brain. Young children lay the foundation for skills that will benefit them for the rest of their lives. Communication, collaboration, problem-solving, creativity, empathy, and flexibility: the 21st-century workforce skills . Toddlers and preschoolers learn through play. In the right environment and with the right guidance and stimulation, they develop their potential to the fullest. Through Spelendwijs, Kober childcare and De Stilte invest in the learning development of toddlers and preschoolers. It contributes to good citizenship, better participation in the labor market in the future, and a healthy lifestyle.
Spelendwijs is made possible in part by donations from the Grez-Mahie Fund Breda, the Zabawas Foundation The Hague, the Casterenshoeve Foundation, and the Janivo Foundation Amsterdam.
About The Silence
De Stilte aims to stimulate children's playful drive to learn and boost their artistic abilities through ambiguous performances and dance activities that spark the imagination. Through play, a child learns to know their world with heart and soul and to position themselves within an overwhelming society. Play is the counterpart to everyday life: the child's personal training ground. In play, the child encounters the world within their own conditions and on their own terms. More information: www.destilte.nl.