Designing and Disseminating
Better Health and Nutrition
Practices
Tap To Togetherness
Enhancing
Well-Being
School of Music, Theatre and Dance; College of Human Ecology;
K-State Research and Extension
Building and
Protecting Global
Food Systems
Enabling Impactful
Technologies
DECODING NATURE
Kansas State University Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activities and Discovery Strengths
Overview
Human development is a necessarily social endeavor, with adults serving as the means for children to learn about the world.
Strategies that promote adult-child interactions enhance thinking, development, and learning. Physical development is also crucial
to cognitive and social-emotional development. K-State researchers from the School of Music, Theatre
and Dance and the College of Human Ecology are enhancing well-being with Tap To Togetherness, a
program that fosters family interactions and child development through movement. Participants attend
tap dance sessions twice a month for children ages 12 months to pre-Kindergarten. Families are allowed
to bring older children.
Sessions are offered through a local Parents as Teachers program and K-State Research and Extension.
Both of these organizations specialize in designing and disseminating better health and nutrition
practices and are providing a network crucial to delivering and sustaining the program and maintaining
the health of families and the development of children.
Impact
Tap To Togetherness fills a gap in activity availability for families with children under the age of 5, particularly for vulnerable or low-income
families. The free program gives families the opportunity to spend quality time together and incorporates research-based strategies to
build resilient relationships and school readiness. Parents are able to respond to their children’s sensory
needs and observe how they listen and respond to others. Social, cognitive, and physical development
are all stimulated through participation in dance: Children learn self-efficacy as they gain more body
control, for example, and take a vital step toward developing math skills as they learn to keep a rhythm.
Researchers, including undergraduate and graduate students, are gathering data from Tap To
Togetherness for analysis that will influence future programming and help them design activities that
maximize and optimize the time families have together. Preliminary findings are promising.
Future plans include expanding classes around the state and developing a mobile application to
assist in delivering the program and staying in touch with families who have participated.
About Kansas State University
Kansas State University was established in 1863 as the nation’s first operational land-grant university. We’ve held firmly to the landgrant philosophy of serving our world through discovery and innovation. Today, the university is on its way to becoming a Top 50
public research university by 2025 through supporting, encouraging, and growing our research efforts.
1887 Agricultural Experiment Station
Important
points in time
for K-State
Research
1967 Alf Landon Lecture
built to analyze horticultural and
entomological subjects
1863 Kansas State University
1944 First U.S. patent application
founded
filed for a plastic container for
frozen foods
2015 National Bio and
Series on Public Issues
established
Agro-Defense Facility
groundbreaking
1997 Hale Library expansion
completed
$184.9 million in FY2014 research expenditures
RECENT SUCCESSES:
14 patents granted in 2014
$473.9 million
in FY2014 endowment
Office of the
Vice President for Research
4 USAID
Feed the Future Innovation Labs
1,000 research grants in FY2014
more than
4,300 graduate students
k-state.edu/research
@KState_RSCAD