Adding art classes to a regular routine has both mental and physical health benefits.  Here are just some of the many advantages of an arts education:

Top 10 skills children learn from the arts | Here’s a list of skills that young people learn from studying the arts. They serve as a reminder that the arts — while important to study for their intrinsic value — also promote skills seen as important in academic and life success.  | Washington Post

Using the Arts to Promote Healthy Aging | Throughout the country, the arts are pumping new life into the bodies and minds of the elderly. | New York Times

Dance

The Benefits of Dance | Dancing isn’t just about the steps and music. It’s a perfect combination of physical activity, social interaction, and mental stimulation. Dancing enhances your life in so many ways: Health, Confidence, Self-Expression, Social, Relaxation, and Fun. | Fred Astaire Dance Studios

Use It or Lose It: Dancing Makes You Smarter | Frequent dancing apparently makes us smarter. | Stanford University

Music

Is Music the Key to Success? | Multiple studies link music study to academic achievement. But what is it about serious music training that seems to correlate with outsize success in other fields?| New York Times

Music ignites all areas of child development: intellectual, social and emotional, motor, language, and overall literacy. It helps the body and the mind work together.  | Bright Horizons

What making music does to your brain | Music is the most advanced auditory stimulus there is. | Ted

Hitting All the Right Notes | Music sticks. It enhances memory skills. It helps with attention. It helps them focus. | CBS

Theater

Top 5 Reasons Kids Should Do Theatre | When I had graduated from college, I looked back at my busy color-coded-calendar days of middle school and high school, and realized that of all the activities I participated in as a kid, theatre taught me the most about who I eventually became. | Neighborhood Parents Network

3 Ways Improv Can Improve Your Career | Even if you never make anyone laugh, these techniques can make you more open minded and better at communication and collaboration. | Fast Company

Why Children's Theater Matters | Want to boost literacy? Teach your child to imagine the unimaginable? Cultivate curiosity? Get thee to the theater, and bring your kids. | Education.com

Visual Arts

7 science-backed reasons you should make art, even if you're bad at it | As scientific research has shown, our minds seem built to enjoy and analyze art deeply, and creating it, no matter your skill level, is good for you. | Tech Insider

At Any Skill Level, Making Art Reduceds Stress Hormones | Whether you’re Van Gogh or a stick-figure sketcher, a new Drexel University study found that making art can significantly reduce stress-related hormones in your body. | Drexel

The Importance of Clay and Pottery In Child Development |There is no better moment for me than witnessing a child’s joy as they sit at the potter’s wheel for the first time and place their wet hands on slowly spinning clay!  | Lakeside Pottery

Creative Arts Therapies

Why Art Therapy Works | Art therapy works to benefit individuals | Psychology Today

Art Therapy & Lasting Impressions: It May Save a Life | The brain is complex and fascinating in registering and storing thoughts and emotions; the greater sense of positive and negative experiences received, the stronger the encoding and retrieval process gets. Through art-making and the meaning behind it- it is striking how deeply words and actions can affect our brains, right down to the core of our existence.  |  Huffington Post