Yes! Music education unlocks the door to success (and more!)

A recent article in the New York Times asked the question: Is music the key to success? Of course, at Kindermusik, we would answer a resounding: Yes! We wouldn’t be alone in that exclamation either.
The body of music education research continues to grow concerning how musical learning can increase social-emotional abilities, math skills, language development, inhibitory control, collaboration, empathy, creativity, cultural understanding, and so much more. Studies show music can decrease pain during medical procedures, lower blood pressure, and lift our overall spirits.

Getting personal about the benefits of music

However, the music education research only tells part of the story. Music is personal as much as it is social. Take the case of United States Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. A bullet to her brain left her in critical condition and unable to speak. However, through music therapy, she is learning how to speak again.

In the above television interview, Dr. Oliver Sacks, Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at Columbia University sums up the benefits of music on language by explaining: “Nothing activates the brain so extensively as music to it to have been possible to create new language areas in the right hemisphere.”
The New York Times article provides more personal stories from individuals who credit the benefits of music to their success in other areas:

The television broadcaster Paula Zahn (cello) and the NBC chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd (French horn) both attended college on music scholarships.
Larry Page, a co-founder of Google, played saxophone in high school.
Steven Spielberg is a clarinetist and son of a pianist.
Condoleezza Rice trained to be a concert pianist.
Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, was a professional clarinet and saxophone player.
The former World Bank president James D. Wolfensohn has played cello at Carnegie Hall.

(Source: WorldBank.org James Wolfensohn performs with Bank/IMF Choral Group at Christmas Concert, 2004)

Music provides balance, explains Mr. Wolfensohn in the New York Times article, who began cello lessons as an adult. “You aren’t trying to win any races or be the leader of this or the leader of that. You’re enjoying it because of the satisfaction and joy you get out of music, which is totally unrelated to your professional status.”
So, again, we answer the question, “Is music the key to success?” with a resounding, Yes…and so much more!

Come experience for yourself how music education can unlock the doors of success for your child. Find a local Kindermusik and try a free class!

The Value of Music for Babies

Music Classes For Babies - Kindermusik Cuddle & Bounce

Some people are surprised to find out that Kindermusik is for children as young as newborns. In fact, a new curriculum called “Cuddle and Bounce” created just for newborns and 1 year olds along with their parents will be available soon. But really, what can such a small child gain from starting Kindermusik before they can even crawl or walk?
The following statement, jointly issued by The National Association for Music Education (MENC), the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), and the US Department of Education, helps explain just how important music education for even the youngest musicians can be….

The Value of Music for the Very Young

The idea that very early education provides great long-term benefits has been rendered incontestable by studies in cognition and early learning. Research in developmental psychology and commonsense observation underscore both the importance and the wisdom of making music an integral and overt part of the earliest education of young children:

(1) We know that music is among the first and most important modes of communication experienced by infants.

The youngest children lack the gift of speech, but they are deeply responsive to the emotional ethos created by music. The lullabies sung by parents help children to accomplish the fundamental developmental task of learning-to trust their environment as a secure one. Songs communicate adult love and the experiences of joy and delight; they teach children that the world is a pleasurable and exciting place to be. Music is essential to the depth and strength of this early foundation for learning and for connecting to life itself.

(2) As young children grow and develop, music continues as a basic medium not only of communication, but of self-expression as well.

Through music, children expand their cognitive universe as they first experience-and later learn to produce-sounds organized to carry musical meaning within their culture. Music expands memory and assists in developing crucial language skills. Music exerts a multiplier effect on reasoning skills, especially on spatial reasoning-an effect that has been demonstrated experimentally. Music also reinforces such logical and perceptual ideas as beginning and ending, cause and effect, sequence and balance, harmony and dissonance, as well as arithmetic concepts such as number, enumeration, and timing.

In addition, as centuries of tradition and modern vehicles such as Sesame Street have taught us all, music in the lives of young children is a highly effective means of delivering vital information about the world itself, as when it is used to teach such basic content as counting, colors, relationships among ideas, social skills, and the wonders of the natural world. Music is also a powerful tool for communicating the full spectrum of human emotion in ways appropriate to children’s experience. Children who may not be able to express verbally their happiness, anger, or sadness can find in music the right outlet and mode for what they cannot yet identify or express clearly using the tools of language.

(3) As preschool children not only listen to and respond to music, but also learn to make music by singing and playing instruments together, they create important contexts for the early learning of vital life skills

such as cooperation, collaboration, and group effort.

(4) Guided music experiences also begin to teach young children to make judgments about what constitutes “good” music,

thereby developing in them the rudiments of an aesthetic sense.

(5) Music contributes strongly to “school readiness,” a foundational education aim of the American people for all our children, as expressed in our National Education Goals.

Music experiences can help children prepare to learn to become literate as it helps them become more aware of and focused on the phonemes that make up the language or languages they will need to excel in school. When children develop musical skill and understanding, they are developing basic cognitive, social, and motor skills necessary for success throughout the educational process. They are preparing skills that will apply to language, to literacy, and to life itself.

…[U]nless the positive learning engendered by music in the earliest years is nurtured by those in the best position to provide it, i.e., parents, music teachers, and professional caregivers, the educational power of music and its potential for sound development can be diminished and diluted.

See the value of music in action…Try a Free Kindermusik Class!

– Excerpted from a report from the Early Childhood Music Summit, June 2000 and shared by Theresa Case, whose Kindermusik program at Piano Central Studios in Greenville, SC, is proudly among the top 1% of Kindermusik programs worldwide.

4 Surprising Ways Your Child Benefits from a Variety of Music

Kindermusik is dedicated to bringing you and your child a variety of music. See how this type of exposure to musical learning expands your child’s development of 4 essential, surprisingly, non-musical skills.

Greater 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 zig-zag ways.

Temporal reasoning

You hear 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.
So there you have it – at least four reasons why we make the claim that Kindermusik is so much more than just music. But we’ll not only help your child become a better learner, we’ll also deliver a classroom experience that inspires a lifelong love for music and gives you tips, ideas, and tools like Kindermusik@Home, resources for parents and educational activities for kids with music downloads that make great parenting just a little bit easier.
Edited and revised by Theresa Case, whose Kindermusik program at Piano Central Studios in Greenville, SC, is proudly among the top 1% of Kindermusik programs worldwide.

FOL Fridays: “Aaaand Stop!”

Musical learning at Kindermusik & at home

Activities that encourage a child to move or STOP moving in response to a cue help the child develop inhibitory control.

This ability to control one’s own body movements is an important first step toward developing both coordination and self-discipline.

Tips for parents:

One start/stop learning game for kids is to turn on a favorite recording or song and have your child dance until you push “pause”. Then start dancing again when the music starts up again.

Learning Through Sign Language

You can also teach your child this ASL sign for STOP. Sometimes giving children something to do, i.e., making the sign for stop themselves, helps them be able to stop their bodies.

– Contributed by Theresa Case, whose Greenville, SC program, Kindermusik at Piano Central Studios, is proudly among the top 1% of Kindermusik programs worldwide.

Music and the Senses

Kindermusik Classes - Learning Through Music & Our Senses

Happy New Year from Kindermusik International!

What better way to start the new year than to learn through music and our senses. Are you enrolled for classes in January?

“Experiences and sensations are learning. Sensations form the base understanding from which concepts and thinking develop. Therefore, sensory enriched environments are imperative to learning.”
(Smart Moves by Carla Hannaford)

Multi-sensory learning is like glue for the brain. According to Carla Hannaford’s work in Smart Moves, multi-sensory learning partnered with a positive emotional experience leads to learning, reasoning, thought. That’s a Kindermusik class!

Kindermusik Classes use Music, Movement, and our Senses!

Each week in Kindermusik class we are using your child’s senses – eyes, ears, tongue, the skin, etc. – to build a foundation of knowledge. It has been said that learning does not occur without movement, because the brain is not taking in information from the environment. As a result, your child is moving and learning and thinking and creating new ideas.

Sensory rich environments are also considered one of three major factors that lead to competency in adulthood. What are the other two factors? Continue reading “Music and the Senses”