How music learning supports all learning
in a Music Together® class
It is amazing what is going on “behind the scenes”
in your child’s body and brain during a Music Together class.
Social-Emotional
In Music Together, teachers include children’s sounds, movements, interests and ideas, even before they can verbally express them, supporting each child’s need to be accepted, understood, and appreciated. Every participant is valued for who they are and everyone brings something unique to the group experience, even the tiniest baby. By developing an awareness of others and seeing how each can contribute to the whole, children learn to appreciate and respect people of all shapes, sizes, ages, and ability levels.
Children’s self-regulation capacities and emerging executive function skills of inhibitory and impulse control, attention, and working memory are developed within a song activity as they anticipate what is next, initiate a response, and then shift attention, stop, and follow. This is particularly noticeable during start and stop activities like drum rolls, big contrasts, and freeze activities.
Social Emotional
Emergent language and literacy development
Music Together song activities support children’s listening skills, vocabulary development, and the ability to recognize, discriminate and produce sounds. Songs are filled with rhymes, alliteration, and new words, and we often sing on vocables (bah, blah, wah) which provides opportunities for auditory discrimination of different phonemes. Through song, children are exposed to the structure and sequence of sounds involved in languages.
There is so much to learn and understand about music and language development, I invite you to take a look at this in-depth paper https://www.frontiersin.org to learn more about your child's language development and its intricate connection to music.
Besides its many other benefits, the songbooks support children’s understanding that print conveys meaning, that letters are grouped to form words, and that written words represent spoken language. Likewise, the notation on the page helps children to recognize that the musical note represents sung language and that notes grouped together form musical phrases and tunes. And the songbook is so fun and interactive, it reinforces a love of books!
Math Awareness
The experience of songs and rhythmic chants in varied meters (how beats are grouped- like 3/4 vs 4/4), and the decoding of the structure of each song happens naturally in your child's brain during Music Together class and while listening at home. Music provides an experience of proportion, patterning, sequencing, and counting.
Think of how children learn to anticipate precisely when to roll backward in a song like “Trot old Joe” and how they can predict when the funny sounds will come at the end of a particular phrase. It is amazing to think how much their brain is processing to figure that out!
Another cool math/music learning example is that children as young as 3, (with sufficient experience) will begin to categorize songs - such as one song in a 3/4 (waltz) meter will remind them of another song in the same meter. That is a high-level musical sorting challenge, and our kids are doing it!
Physical Development
Movement is an essential part of a child’s learning. From fingerplays, small and large movement, movement in place and through space (locomotor), movement that crosses the midline of the body, the use of rhythm instruments and singing itself, class activities support the development of body awareness, coordination and balance, muscle strength, and fine, gross, sensory, and oral motor skills.
The Power of Music
Music is emotion, connection, ritual, and complexity. It’s something we turn to again and again to mark important life transitions, to help us cope with loss and celebrate love, and to gather in shared purpose and community. Music is a way of knowing, of learning who we are, expressing feelings when we have no words; and a way to understand things with our hearts when we can't with our minds. And it starts in the first days and years of life.
Music forges unique connections in the brain, integrating mind, body, and emotions. With ongoing music experience from birth to kindergarten, children develop the ability to sing in tune and keep a beat. With family support, they gain the disposition to be music-makers and learners, setting them up with a solid foundation for formal music or dance instruction. In addition to music skills, immersion in an interactive, musically rich environment like Music Together® fosters children's growth and development in many other areas essential to success in school and life, such as creativity, self-expression, and confidence. It helps them have a positive attitude toward learning. We are forever grateful to be a part of your children's lives as one of their first teachers and witness it all!
The next time you pick up your little one and dance around the kitchen, sing a song while changing their diaper, or play in your Music Together class, you can know that big things are happening. Inside that wonderful little body is a brain that’s sparking, changing, and learning with every note, wiggle, and bounce.
