Musical Variety is the Spice of Life

Infants are born with the ability to process musical sounds and patterns, and there is an optimum window of time between birth and three years when the ear is ripe for aural language development. The musical stimulation we provide as parents is so important for this language development.
Because music is also important in developing a child’s sense of patterning and memory skills, it follows that providing exposure to a wide variety of music should be one of our educational goals as parents. Kindermusik effectively widens the musical world for your child by providing choice selections from many lands and cultures.

Exposure to cultures through music

Children need a balance between the familiar and the new… and Kindermusik provides just that. One of the ways we can help our children appreciate and begin to understand other cultures and people groups is by exposing them to their music. One of the great joys of music is the connection it provides emotionally across cultural lines.
As your child listens and engages in musical experiences provided by Kindermusik and at home, he acquires a musical repertoire that will last a lifetime. He is developing his musical “taste buds”, to “appreciate the finer things”, and to enjoy new musical “tastes and textures”. The wider the array of musical styles, the richer that repertoire will be. Listen to your Kindermusik recordings and you’ll find multi-cultural music in a variety of musical styles. And the best part? It’s just plain fun to listen to! Now if only Kindermusik could accomplish the same thing with your child’s diet, right?!

Are you looking for some musical variety?

Try a free Kindermusik class today!  It’s a musical experience with songs and activities the whole family will love – in class and at home.

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

Musical variety is the spice of life

You’ve probably heard the old proverb: “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, along with these developmental benefits:

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 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 musical taste 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!

Posted by Theresa Case whose Kindermusik program at Piano Central Studios is proudly among the top 1% of Kindermusik programs worldwide.