Music Lesson Blog

Music for Babies, Toddlers & Preschoolers. Part 4

  

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Thus far, we've explored 3 of the Essentiall Principles every parent of a baby, toddler or preschooler in Champaign Urbana should know in order to create a musically rich enviroment and nurture their child's innate musical intelligence. In the previous blog we explored the Third Essential Principle: Participation and Modeling of Parents and Primary Caregivers is Essential! In today's article, we will explore #4 - A playful, musically rich and non-performance-oriented learning environment is best! Here's a recap of the Top 4 Prinicples.

1. All Children are Musical
2. All Children can acquire basic Music Skills and enjoy making music!
3. Participation and modeling of Parents and Primary Caregivers is essential!
4. A playful, musically rich and non-performance-oriented learning environment is best! 

A Playful, Musically Rich and Non-Performance-Oriented Learning Environment is Best!

Young children learn best in a non-formal envinronment: one that's free from expectations of performance pressure and undue interference with their natural sense of fun. Simply, children learn through playing! As adults, who live in performance oriented environments, it is often difficult to let go of performance oriented expectations even for our young children. However at this stage its all about The Process. If we combine the 4 Essential Principles: 1. belief in our child's innate musical intelligence, 2. belief that they can achieve Basic Music Competency, 3. active, enthusiastic music making modeling 4. a musically rich, non-performance-oriented environment with Patience and Consistentcy, in time, our children will achieve in music like they do in language.

In addition to creating an ideal music learning environment, we must also be respectful and aware of the different learning styles of young child. This will help us form effective expectations for our child's responses and interaction with musically rich activities. Again, as adults who have attended multiple educational institutions where we sit in a classroom, take notes, ask questions and produce results oriented demonstrations of our understanding, we are often perplexed when our child does not do the same in response to an educational activity or class. In general, you have probably noticed that some children jump right in while others prefer to observe. More specifically, different children learn best by:

• listening while actively moving around the room
• observing and listening while staying glued to their spot
• trying to actively imitate their parent and teacher vocally, physically, or both

It is not uncommon for parents to mistakenly attribute the first two learning styles to a lack of interest or attention however it is not. Often a very young child's musically related responses, unless drawn attention to by the teacher, are missed by parents. Toddlers and preschoolers, who's learning styles fall into the first two examples, and seemingly were not paying attention, will often repeat, sing, hum and dance to songs, they've heard, several hours later and throughout the following week. 

By providing musically rich activities that enable our children to play and by respecting their various ways of learning and absorbing, we enable them to discover, explore and develop their own, innate musical intelligence. Next week, we'll talk about how your child's music development parallels their language development.  

 Find additional information on the philosophy & method of our brand new Early Childhood classes at: www.MusicTogether.com