Learning Through Musical Play

You've probably heard the old saying: “Variety is the spice of life.” When it comes to music, musical variety is definitely the spice of life! When you expose your children to music from around the world, you expose them to different cultures, countries, ideas, and experiences.  This is why Kindermusik uses such a wide genre of music.  Musical play also enhance child development in the following ways:

Language proficiency
Just as you read a variety of books to expand your child’s vocabulary, exposure to a wide variety of music and sounds expands your child’s “ear vocabulary.” High quality musical recordings and real instruments help your child “fine tune” her ear to recognize and imitate the sounds that make up words and language.

Spatial awareness
When a child listens to music, her mind perceives the sound in multi-dimensional ways. The sound is loud or soft, fast or slow, it moves up and down, or left to right. Eventually, she’ll use that “awareness of space” to work with her body when she walks through the living room and tries not to hit the coffee table. Much later, this same awareness is necessary skill for learning how to get around things, jump, run, and move in turning, twisting ways.

Temporal reasoning
You see this skill in action when a preschooler tells a story. He starts with his own experience and then moves to some imagined place with a princess or a superhero then goes back to something real again. Music does the same thing. It goes back and forth between established places (the chorus) and to new places that take you somewhere else (the verse). The ability to go back and forth from something established to something imagined comes from temporal reasoning, a skill used in music writing, storytelling, and problem solving.

Emotional intelligence
With exposure to a greater variety of musical styles-like jazz, folk, or classical, this increased exposure to music increases a child’s awareness, and understanding of different moods and emotions.

Cognitive skills
Research shows that music contributes to the development of a child’s ability to reason, his sense of patterning, and his memory skills.

Musical appetite
In the early years between newborn and age 7, your child is developing his musicaltaste buds as he learns to appreciate the finer things and to enjoy new musical tastes and textures. The wider the array of musical styles, the richer his “appetite” will be.

Try this at home… Your child is naturally musical. Hearing you sing and listening to recordings are like food for her musical appetite. Sing with child at least three times a day. Consider these song sessions musical breakfast, lunch, and dinner. (By the way, “lunch” can be interpreted loosely. Just plan the routine of singing together at a time that works for your schedule – when your child wakes up, in the car, doing dishes, at naptime, fixing supper, etc.!) Once you start, you will find that there is a song for everything. If you can’t remember what that song is, make one up!

The information in the post comes from Theresa Case whose Kindermusik program is located in Greenville, South Carolina.  

Young Child, Week 13

This week we reviewed all that we’ve learned through the semester focusing on remember the position of “C” on the staff, (third space up).  Please have your children use their manipulatives to make a staff and place the “C” in the right place.  Help them understand that the staff has a top and a bottom. This is a tricky idea because the five lines look the same right side up and upside down. 

We also worked on the proper technique for playing the glockenspiel. In order to ensure success playing the glockenspiel, it is very important that each child first thoroughly understand the way to hold the mallets and the way to use them to tap the glockenspiel keys. Use Music at Home 13 to review the procedures with your child.

If you can, create an opportunity for your child to play “Jingle Bells,” as part of your holiday celebration.  If they are scared to perform then give them a non-threatening opportunity, like playing the song for grandma while you’re fixing food. You don’t want to crush their musical interest by forcing them to perform.  

Dream Pillow, Week Five

Music is rich with patterns of rhythm and melody, from simple to complex. Baby’s brain is designed to seek patterns, right from birth, as she makes sense of the world. Thus, the simple, engaging song provides experience Baby’s brain is hungry for. 

This week when we sang Sarasponda, sometimes I left out the “oh”.  This was to help our babies develop a patterning skill of noticing when something is left out.  The musical term is audiation, “to think”. This is the ability to hear music when no musical sound is present.  It requires listening and memory skills.  This skill carries over into other areas of brain development and learning. 

From time-to-time this week include audiation into playtime.  Sing your baby’s favorite song and leave out the last word. Wait and give your little singer time to fill in the missing word or see if he notices that the word was left out. After a while, leave out the word at the end of sentences. (Example:  Old MacDonald had a ______, Ee-I-Ee-I _____.)  

Village, Dream Pillow, Week 4

From Skinnamarink and Saraponda to Dream Pillow Lullab,  class this week was filled with a colorful words, songs, and sounds. Playing with words in speech and song is a critical part of vocal development. This type of play allows babies to practice the precise coordination of lips, tongue, and breathing necessary to speak words. Since the ability to sing and the ability to converse with expressive speech are closely related, vocal play in songs, poems, and rhymes can help your baby develop both singing and speech skills.

Need a break from the norm? Try a little vocal play at home this week by breaking apart words of a song and repeating syllable sounds or singing/speaking slowly. Emphasize the movement of your mouth and lips; then wait and give your baby time to respond.

Here are a few other thoughts on music and learning to consider:

One More Time: One method of learning for young children is repetition. Repetition of experience provides stabilization of the brain’s neural pathways.

Relaxation: Relaxation is a learned behavior. Setting aside this time each week not to be engaged in an active, thinking activity helps Baby learn to enjoy quiet play and learn that relaxation can include times other than nap time and bedtime.

Language Development: Baby is learning more than she can say as she watches and listens to you reciting this rhyme. Infants younger than six months can distinguish a wide range of speech contrasts. By eight months many can distinguish familiar words from unfamiliar words.

I feel; Therefore, I learn: Baby must be emotionally involved in an activity to learn. Incoming sensory stimulation is processed first through the brain’s non-rational, non-conscious limbic system, the seat of emotion, and only then goes to the neocortex, or rational brain. 

Young Child, Week 12

Music is an all encompassing discipline:

·       Reading and writing in music is called music notation. This week the children are learning about the note c on the music staff. Help your child “write” c on Activity Page 9. If you have any music at home, help your child “read” the note c by locating the note on space number three of the music staff.

·       Listening in music consists not only of listening to music but learning to focus our attention on abstract sounds and on speech. Help your child further “attend” (pay attention) to sounds by pinpointing sounds in your environment such as water lapping over stones, rain falling on the rooftop, or wind rushing through the trees. Also, play a listening game by speaking a 4 or 5 word sentence and asking your child to repeat what he heard.

·       Movement with music consists of free movement as well as choreographed steps.  This is why we often move to music in class.  We also must move to make music.  This week have your child practice hitting the high “C” on the glockenspiel (big white dot) to “Toot, Toot,” with the song “Train is a Come’n” on their home CD. Through out the song have them bounce their mallets in the air in front of them to the beat until they come to the “Toot, Toot.” At the “Toot, Toot” have them strike the “C” first with one mallet and then with the other.

Please have your child keep practicing Jingle Bells.  Remember to have them use both hands! Enjoy your child’s ever increasing awareness of music in your lives!