child brain development Archives - Minds On Music

The Importance of Intentional Play & Loving Connections in the Early Years

It’s hard not to goo and coo and tickle and cuddle and play peek-a-boo with a cute little baby. But science is now discovering just exactly how important those goos, coos, tickles, cuddles, and peek-a-boos are, demonstrating that while Nature has a hand in how the brain is pre-wired, the brain depends very heavily on environmental input, or nurture – those tickles, cuddles, and peek-a-boos we keep talking about – in order to wire itself further. (Read more here.) How intricately the brain gets wired has long-term impact on all seven areas of intelligence, how well a child does in school, and how they function socially and emotionally.

So how can a parent be intentional about the play and loving connections that are so crucial in the early years? Here are some simple suggestions:

Make time for play. It’s easy to get caught up in the busyness of daily life. So maybe your playtime with your child is just before leaving for work or just after supper before bath time. Whatever time is best for you, make it a non-negotiable part of your day.
Get down on the floor with your child. You can’t help but be a lot more engaged when you’re at their level. The play and interaction will come more and more naturally as you spend more and more time in play with your child.
Be silly! No one else is watching, so go ahead, and just take delight in what delights your child. YouTube is full of silly parent-child videos that have gone viral. You know the ones where the parent does something silly and unexpected only to be rewarded with the best belly laugh ever.
Talk to your child. Tell her about your day. Describe what you’re doing, even if it’s a mundane activity. Or just try some nonsense baby talk. Even if they can’t talk back, they’ll still be enthralled with hearing your voice. And if you take a few conversational pauses, you might even get some goos and coos in response.
Dance with your child. Your music or theirs. It doesn’t really matter. What does matter is the eye contact, the full attention, the love, and the joy of moving together.
Cuddle and sing lullabies. There’s nothing that invites more loving connections than cuddling and singing to your child. And don’t worry… to your child, your voice is the most beautiful sound in the whole wide world.

Need some inspiration for playing, singing, and interacting with your child? Try a Kindermusik class. We have tons of ideas and resources to share!

Extraordinary benefit of music on the cognitive development of children

Take a peek inside any Kindermusik classroom around the world and you will see much of the same thing. We sing. We dance. We play instruments. We listen to music. We move our bodies in response to music. We create music.
In all of our musical activities for kids, we engage children and families in learning both in the early childhood classroom and in the daily routines and rituals of family life. While this peek represents an ordinary (and fun!) day in a Kindermusik classroom, the benefits of music on the cognitive development of children is so much more than ordinary. For a young child’s brain development, the benefits of music are actually extra-ordinary.

A peek at the cognitive development of children who participate in music classes

While any parent can contact a local Kindermusik educator and take a free peek at a class, we need the help of scientists to look inside a child’s brain. Researchers from Boston’s Children’s Hospital recently took a closer look at what happens when children participate in music classes. The team studied 30 adults between the ages of 18 and 35 (15 working musicians and 15 non-musicians), and 27 children between the ages of 9 and 12 (over half of whom had at least two years of musical training).
As published in the online journal PLOSONE, they discovered that children with early musical training experience advanced executive function skills during cognitive testing. So, in other words, the benefits of music enables a child’s brain to more quickly process and retain information, regulate behaviors, make good choices, solve problems, plan, and adjust to changing mental demands. Sounds pretty extraordinary to us!
“Since executive functioning is a strong predictor of academic achievement, even more than IQ, we think our findings have strong educational implications,” explained study senior investigator Nadine Gaab, PhD, of the Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience at Boston Children’s in a press release. “While many schools are cutting music programs and spending more and more time on test preparation, our findings suggest that musical training may actually help to set up children for a better academic future.”

A child’s brain on Kindermusik

Incorporating music and movement into a child’s learning routine stimulates all areas of the brain and that is why music is the best vehicle of learning for early childhood education. Independent research studies show that Kindermusik—specifically—impacts the cognitive development of children. Children participating in our music classes show a 32 percent literacy gain and show marked improvement in inhibitory control.
So, whether you are looking to enroll your child in a Kindermusik class, bring Kindermusik to your childcare center or Head Start program, or even to your language school, the cognitive benefits of music will be evident.

For more information about bringing the benefits of music to your school or to find a local Kindermusik educator, visit the Class Locator.

Music and language share common brain pathways

(Source: http://www.womenshealthmag.com)

Athletes employ the benefits of music to boost overall performance. Science shows that specific types of music can really get the blood pumping and focus the mind on the task at hand—like 1-minute planks or running those last few miles. However, a new study also shows that music can get the blood pumping for language development, too.
Music and language development on the same path to learning
In two related studies, researchers from the University of Liverpool found that brief musical training can increase the blood flow in the left hemisphere of the brain—the same area of the brain responsible for language learning.
The initial study examined the brain activity patterns in musicians and non-musicians as they participated in musical activities and word generation tasks at the same time. The results showed that the musicians’ brains showed similar paths during the activities, but the non-musicians did not.
In the follow-up study, the researchers measured the brain activity patterns of non-musicians who participated in both a word generation task and music perception task. Then, the participants received 30 minutes of musical training and then completed the tasks again. After the musical training, significant similarities were found in the brain.
Amy Spray, who conducted the research, explained in a press release: “The areas of our brain that process music and language are thought to be shared. Previous research has suggested that musical training can lead to the increased use of the left hemisphere of the brain. This study looked into the modulatory effects that musical training could have on the use of different sides of the brain when performing music and language tasks. It was fascinating to see that the similarities in blood flow signatures can be brought about after just 30 minutes of simple musical training.”
Music and young ELL students

ABC English & Me - Teaching English to Children through Music

While the study above focused on adult participants, the results impact English language learners in the early childhood classroom, too. ABC English & Me, our English Language Learners curriculum, uses ESL activities for kids, words with picture cards, puppets, and English songs for kids to teach young children English. From the first song at the start of each class to the last shake or tap of an instrument, children quickly become engaged in actively learning English through fun, games, and, of course, music!
Plus, we provide materials for families to use together at home. These monthly interactive materials support the classroom learning, while giving parents the tools they need to continue the English language learning at home through music.

Learn more about bringing ABC English & Me and the power of music to your school!

4 Cool Music Facts

When young children are consistently engaged by music in an age-appropriate, socially accepting environment, they benefit at so many levels. Learning through music literally lights up every area of a child’s brain and teaches little ones to love learning. So, in our music education classes for babies, big kids, toddlers, preschoolers, and families when we recite a nursery rhyme, participate in a circle dance or movement activity, play a vocal game, and explore instruments, children develop skills in early literacy and language, spatial-temporal and reasoning skills, physical development, and creativity.

4 Cool Music Facts

1. Making music together connects brains.

Researchers in Germany conducted a study with trained guitarists in which they attached electrodes to their heads while they played a duet. During the study, they found that the brain waves coordinated between the two guitarists while they played the duet together. This also applies to choral groups, orchestras, small ensembles, and yes, even music education classes for kids.

2. Singing (and dancing) the Hokey Pokey helps children learn to read, walk around the room, and understand geometry.

When young children explore the directions up and down during a fingerplay or put their left hands in and take their left hands out, they gain a greater understanding of spatial awareness. Spatial awareness is the ability to be mindful of where you are in space and to see two or more objects in relation to each other and to yourself. This eventually helps young children to safely navigate around a room, tell the difference between letters and group them together on a page to recognize words, and understand geometry.

3. Music and movement experiences in a group teach children how to be a good friend.

Actively participating in a music class class for babies, toddlers, big kids or families, impacts all seven areas of social-emotional development, including confidence, curiosity, intentionality, self-control, relatedness, capacity to communicate, cooperativeness. All key skills needed to be a good friend.

4. Steady beat gives children the ability to walk effortlessly, speak expressively, and even regulate repeated motions such as riding a bicycle, brushing teeth, or dribbling a ball.

Through music, children experience and respond to steady beat during lap bounces, instrument play, and by dancing. While children move to the beat with their bodies instinctively, learning to control those movements, and to follow—or create—is an essential component of a child’s early development.

Need more? Join a Kindermusik class near you! We’ve been making music together with families all around the world for 40 years, and we’d love to sing, dance, and refine those critical skills with you.

Contributed by Lisa Camino Rowell, a freelance writer and former Kindermusik parent, who loves seeing the long-term impact of Kindermusik classes on her children.

Celebrate Inventors Month with the benefits of music

Happy Inventors Month! In 1998, the United Inventors Association of the USA (UIA-USA), the Academy of Applied Science, and Inventors’ Digest magazine started Inventor’s Month as a way to celebrate the various contributions of inventors. Inventors make our lives easier from electricity to indoor plumbing to modern medicine to peanut better.
The list of top inventors probably includes Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, George Washington Carver, Marie Curie, every child. Wait. “Every child?” Yes! Children make great inventors. Think about it. An inventor is someone who creates some new process, appliance, machine, or thing. To a child, everything is a new process—from learning how to eat, roll over, stand, walk, talk, roll a ball, and more. Children also discover new uses for everyday objects. A laundry basket becomes a turtle shell, a stack of pillows turns into a mountain worth exploring, a baby spoon makes a great instrument, and blocks become, well, just about anything!

3 ways to encourage children as inventors

Participate in the arts. Research indicates that STEM graduates (those majoring in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics fields) showed an increased involvement in visual arts, acting, dance, and creative writing. Even better, 93 percent of those graduates participated in music classes as a child.
Combine music and learning. Music is more than, well, music. The benefits of music include supporting the social-emotional, physical, and the cognitive development of children. New research found that science-themed music videos boost scientific learning. We already learn our ABCs through song, so why not learn about gravity, phases of the moon, the life cycles of frogs, and all about magnets, too?
Play together. Children learn through play. Provide the children in your life with hands-on playtime with caring, loving adults. Playing together helps children learn about their world and their place in it. One of the greatest inventors of all time, Albert Einstein, understood the benefits of play. After all, he said, “Play is the highest form of research.”

4 musical activities to celebrate Inventor’s Month

For Babies: (From Cuddle & Bounce, “Bluebird, Bluebird”—Crinkly, Furry, Bumpy, Strange)
Touch, squeeze, feel, pat. Babies explore their worlds with their hands (and sometimes mouths). With an adult there to exercise diligent supervision, of course, there are plenty of ways to introduce new and interesting textures and sensations to a baby.
For Young Toddlers: (From Sing & Play “Family All Around Me”—Fill & Empty)
Fill it up, dump it out. Fill it up, dump it out. Sound familiar? Fill and empty is an enduring ‘play scheme’ among toddlers, and there are so many variations on the theme! Here are a few fresh ideas that will engage toddlers.
For Older Toddlers: (From Wiggle & Grow “Beach Days”—Let’s Make…A Beach in a Bottle!
You know that feeling, when you’ve spent a great day at the beach and you just wish you could bottle it and bring it home with you…?
For Preschoolers: (From Laugh & Learn “Outside My Window”—Be a Sound Inventor: Weather Sounds)
You won’t believe how easy it is to make these weather sound effects! This friendly tutorial teaches you how to imitate the sounds of light rain, heavy rain, thunder, and wind.

Do you want to bring the power of music to your child and family? Find a local Kindermusik educator today!

Contributed by Lisa Camino Rowell, whose oldest daughter learned about the phases of the moon through song.

Music & Movement Benefits: "Scaffolding" Your Child's Learning

The term scaffolding evokes the image of a temporary support structure in a construction site. The process of scaffolding in an educational sense is much like the traditional definition of scaffolding as a temporary support system used until a task is complete and a building stands without support. That sounds a lot like our job as parents, doesn’t it? We provide a temporary support system for our children until they can stand on their own in the world.
Scaffolding occurs all the time in our Kindermusik classes as parents and children play with instruments, props, your voices, and movement and discover ways to adapt activities to their own style and their child’s unique interests and abilities. Kindermusik combines this educational strategy (scaffolding) with music and learning activities as just another way to enhance the child’s whole development – cognitive development, emotional development, language development, and more!
Helps for Parents: Be on the lookout for scaffolding opportunities at home, at the park, the grocery store…anywhere at all. Three easy directives to remember (while you’re providing that “temporary platform” for life): Ask questions, make observations (eye-to-eye, imitate & label), and give challenges – and before you know it, that little “building” will be standing with no support.
Learn how to scaffold with us – try a free Kindermusik class today!
Compiled by Theresa Case, whose Kindermusik program at Piano Central Studios in Greenville, SC, is proudly among the top 1% of Kindermusik programs worldwide.

Music is a Super Power

Ever wonder why there is not a superhero with the Power of Music? Seriously. Sure, super strength and the ability to fly come in handy, but the Power of Music can sooth and calm a fussy baby (well, really a person of any age—adults included!), convince a reluctant toddler to clean up toys, help a preschooler discriminate between letter sounds, and even teach a child self-control.
Let’s face it. The Power of Music is a super power, especially when it comes to the cognitive development in children. But, wait, there’s more! Studies even show that the benefits of music extend well beyond childhood. Who needs to leap tall buildings?

Two long-term cognitive benefits of music

Two recent studies on the benefits of music show that music lessons in childhood can protect an adult’s brain from dementia, positively impact memory recall, and help aging adults maintain sound discrimination that supports speech:

As explained in the Journal of Neuroscience when adults age, many experience challenges in understanding and responding to speech, especially in certain environments, such as restaurants. However, older adults with music training as children do not exhibit neural timing delays. Adult participants with 4 to 14 years of musical training as children had faster response times to speech than those without musical training as children. Most surprisingly, they had not attended music classes in over 40 years!
Dr. Luis Fornazzari of St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto has also studied adult musicians’ memory in relation to dementia. He noticed that older adults who could play music as children did not experience the same level of decay in the discrimination of sounds when compared to non-musicians. “The brain becomes absolutely trained in the discrimination of the sounds, the human voice and the different instruments, the different notes and that lasts,” Fornazzari explained in Learning music early build’s up brain’s reserves. “If the disease [dementia] occurs and you have good brain reserve capacity, you can tolerate the effect of the disease for longer not showing the symptoms until later.”

So, while we may not be able to give our children the Super Power of flight or strength—or even an invisibility cloak for that matter—we can give our children the super power of music! Do you want to bring the power of music to your child and family?

Find a local Kindermusik educator.

US Congress recognizes importance of early child development

Baby-Safe Instruments - Tips from Kindermusik

Around here, we have a saying: A Good Beginning Never Ends. The early years of a child’s life make a difference on child brain development. That’s just not us saying it, the research proves it again and again. For example, birth to three years old is the peak age for child brain development with 700 new neural connections forming every second!
Now, with the introduction of the Strong Start for America’s Children Act of 2013, the United States Congress recognizes the importance of early child development. Senator Harkin, Representative Miller, and Representative Hanna introduced the Bill, which offers more babies and toddlers the chance to participate in high-quality programs and services, including Early Head Start, that support early child development and the pivotal role of parents.

How does the bill focus on early child development?

Gives Early Head Start programs the ability to reach more eligible children through innovative partnerships with high-quality childcare programs.
Allows states to use up to 15 percent of their Pre-K funding to provide child care settings for infants and toddlers to help prevent the learning gap and ensure they are on-track when they get to Pre-K.
Endorses the expansion of evidence-based home visiting programs that have been shown to have a range of positive impacts on parenting and early child development.

We know firsthand a good beginning never ends. We experience it every day in the classroom—from our Early Head Start and Head Start curriculum to studio classes for babies, toddlers, big kids, and families to our English Language Learners curriculum.

Learn more about the Strong Start for America’s Children Act of 2013 and the importance of early child development.

The Power of the Lullaby

Once again, research proves what we parents have known instinctively for a long time… that playing music and singing lullabies has the power to soothe, lower stress, strengthen bonds, and improve sleeping patterns.
Kindermusik has long recognized the power of music especially when it comes to child brain development, but we specifically use lullabies because of the emotional and health benefits. In fact, we include a lullaby or rocking song in every one of our baby music classes and toddlers classes. And just in case you’re wondering, some of our favorite Kindermusik lullabies include:

You Are My Sunshine
Golden Slumbers
May There Always Be Sunshine
Hush, Little Baby
Tell Me Why
That’s An Irish Lullaby

By the way, what researchers found most impacting was for these little ones to hear the voices of their loved ones singing – a special reminder that the most important people in a child’s life are his/her parents and close family members and that nothing is sweeter than the sound of your voice in your child’s ears.

Find more Kindermusik lullabies and download them from play.kindermusik.com. Simply search on “lullaby.”

Learn more Kindermusik lullabies and songs when you enroll in a Kindermusik class. Try a FREE class on us today!

Shared by Theresa Case, who has an award-winning Kindermusik program at Piano Central Studios in beautiful Upstate South Carolina

5 cognitive benefits of a bilingual curriculum

According to research, learning to speak English as a second language—or another foreign language—impacts the cognitive development in children. Of course, experiencing a bilingual curriculum can help prepare a child for a global workforce as adults. Plus, the younger a child learns a second language the more likely they are to speak like a native speaker.
In our ESL curriculum development for ABC English & Me, we combined our more than 35 years of experience with music and learning with the latest research on English Language Learning. Here are just a few of the benefits revealed in the research.

5 effects of a bilingual curriculum on child brain development

Children who learn another language, including ELL students, score better on standardized tests, especially in math, reading, and vocabulary.
Children who speak more than one language can easily switch between two or more systems of speech, writing, and structure.
Bilingual and multilingual children exhibit stronger memories than monolinguals.
Learning another language boosts the language capabilities of the first language.
Bilingual children score higher on nonverbal problem-solving tests when compared to children who only speak one language.

Tag: child brain development

The Importance of Intentional Play & Loving Connections in the Early Years

Need some inspiration for playing, singing, and interacting with your child? Try a Kindermusik class. We have tons of ideas and resources to share!

Extraordinary benefit of music on the cognitive development of children

A peek at the cognitive development of children who participate in music classes

A child’s brain on Kindermusik

For more information about bringing the benefits of music to your school or to find a local Kindermusik educator, visit the Class Locator.

Music and language share common brain pathways

Learn more about bringing ABC English & Me and the power of music to your school!

4 Cool Music Facts

4 Cool Music Facts

Celebrate Inventors Month with the benefits of music

3 ways to encourage children as inventors

4 musical activities to celebrate Inventor’s Month

Do you want to bring the power of music to your child and family? Find a local Kindermusik educator today!

Music & Movement Benefits: "Scaffolding" Your Child's Learning

Music is a Super Power

Two long-term cognitive benefits of music

Find a local Kindermusik educator.

US Congress recognizes importance of early child development

How does the bill focus on early child development?

Learn more about the Strong Start for America’s Children Act of 2013 and the importance of early child development.

The Power of the Lullaby

Read more about this fascinating study conducted with preemies in the neonatal intensive care unit at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City.

Find more Kindermusik lullabies and download them from play.kindermusik.com. Simply search on “lullaby.”

Learn more Kindermusik lullabies and songs when you enroll in a Kindermusik class. Try a FREE class on us today!

5 cognitive benefits of a bilingual curriculum

5 effects of a bilingual curriculum on child brain development

Read more about the positive impact of music and movement on young ELL students, the research behind it, and how our ESL curriculum, which uses English songs for kids, puts it into practice.