The Younger, the Better

Posted October 6, 2009

Some people are quite surprised to find out that Kindermusik is for children as young as newborns. Really, what can such a young child gain from starting in a music and movement program like Kindermusik as an infant or toddler?

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 can be for even the youngest musicians…

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:

  • [M]usic is among the first and most important modes of communication experienced by infants.
  • As young children grow and develop, music continues as a basic medium not only of communication, but of self-expression as well.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Music contributes strongly to “school readiness…”

– excerpted from a report issued by the Early Childhood Music Summit, June 2000.  Read the article in its entirety HERE

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