Nursery Rhymes Teach Speech and Vocabulary

You've noticed that in Sound Beginnings we do many things beyond singing. 

One thing we include in every class is a chance to practice our nursery rhymes.  But why?

Nursery rhymes are POWER-PACKED with educational awesomeness.  In this three-part blog series, I'll walk you through the skills and tell you how you can have more fun at home!

Speech

When children hear nursery rhymes, they practice pitch, volume, voice inflection, and the rhythm of speaking.  

If you consider your own speaking voice, it sounds different when you ask a question or make a statement. You have a different rhythm and inflection when you tell a story than when you place a sub sandwich order. Your child needs to learn how to use all of these to sound like a native speaker. 

Young speakers also must work the muscles of their mouth, lips, and tongue to create all the new sounds and articulate tricky words.

Nursery rhymes give an opportunity to practice these skills in a silly, fun, playful way...which is to say, in the native language of children!

Speech Practice at Home

Does your child have a little trouble articulating some sounds? It's a learning process for all toddlers!

Step one: Pay attention to your child- which letters seem most tricky? Plan to do a little practice for those.
Step two: Be very aware of how YOUR mouth and tongue move to create the sounds.
Step three: SHOW your mouth/face/lips to your child as you speak. Point out what is going on. Ask her to copy you.
Step four: Learn some nursery rhymes together and practice saying all these wonderful words together!

Here's a video for teaching 'G' and 'K', from a speech pathologist and here is a podcast for teaching /r/.

Here's a video for practicing T, D, N and L:


HERE is another video for practicing letters 'F' and 'V'. 
And HERE is a video for practicing 'P' 'B' and 'M'.

Vocabulary

Nursery rhymes introduce interesting vocabulary to help expand a youngster's repertoire: Jack and Jill went up a hill to fetch a pail of water.  Mary, Mary, quite contrary. Jack be nimble, Jack be quick.

Research has show that in 1945, the average elementary school student had a vocabulary of 10,000 words. Today, children have a vocabulary of only 2,500 words.  Parents are not reading to their children as often, and vocabulary is suffering. The decrease also stems from children not memorizing rhymes, the bread-and-butter of traditional early children's literature.

Memorize nursery rhymes with your child!

Capitalize on the opportunity to have a "word of the week" and use the new words from Sound Beginnings class all week long: "Can you please fetch your sock and shoes? If your sister is feeling contrary, maybe some tickles will cheer her up. Hop nimbly up into your car seat! Be quick!"

Traditional rhymes are repetitious and allow children to memorize basic structures and patterns in the English language, then they'll want to try it out on their own with longer, more complex sentences.  

I remember the red-letter day when my then 2 year-old son said, "I saw the cat go down the stairs into the basement." It was his longest sentence ever! We were delighted.  

Be on the lookout for your child's construction of similar wonders, and repeat them back. "You saw the cat go down the stairs into the basement? How exciting!"

 It's important that young children learn to memorize through verse!

Fun at Home: Role Play

Get more practice with emphasis, accent, inflection, and vocabulary through role-play games at home.  It's time to bring out your inner thespian! 

Role-play can also help children prepare for and process situations they encounter in daily life. And, of course, your children LOVE when you are silly and vulnerable enough to play this way with them.  Here are a couple of ideas to get you started, and be sure to take turns in different roles.

RESTAURANT: Kids love to pretend they own a restaurant. Act out what you'll say when you go to a restaurant! Here's one family's version of this type of experience (you get the idea):



DENTIST or DOCTOR: When you're the patient, it's hilarious to invent crazy symptoms. "I have purple spots in my armpits. What could be causing that?" Kids will practice speaking in a confident, authoritative way as they answer you.

BUS DRIVER: Set up chairs to set the 'bus' stage, then tell the young driver where you'd like to go. Talk about what you see out the windows. "Driver! Can you please pull over? I see some chickens selling eggs and I'd like to get out and buy some!"

NURSERY RHYMES: Create a storied experience from your favorite rhymes. Have Humpty Dumpty fall onto the sofa, Jack and Jill climb up the stairs, and Teddy Bear run 'round and 'round the kitchen table.  "Hello Mister Dumpty, are you sure you should be sitting up there on the sofa back? I am afraid you are very fragile."  "Jack, will you please bring that pail and climb this hill with me? I need to fetch some water. It's a very big hill."


Want to see the rest of the seven amazing ways nursery rhymes are teaching your child to be fantastic?

We've got a bonus prize for you 

if you make it all the way through part 3!

Keep reading for PART 2, How rhymes teach Reading and Math! 

or jump ahead to PART 3: How rhymes help with coordination, social skills, and MUSIC!

-Gina Weibel, M.S.
Let's Play Music Teacher

Nursery Rhymes Teach Reading and Math

You read about how nursery rhymes are powerful tools for helping children develop speech and vocabulary in PART 1. Here in PART 2 I want to show how nursery rhymes teach reading and math skills!

Reading and Phonics

One great part about nursery rhymes is the rhymes. Children practice hearing rhyming words and sensing how vowels and consonants combine to make different words and word families. 

Memorizing nursery rhymes is an important way to build a repertoire of rhyming words!

Recognition of word patterns helps young readers make sense of phonics and bolster their reading skills. Hat, bat, cat, fat...they all sound the same at the end and voila! They have the same letters at the end!

A favorite game I like to play with toddlers is Find a Rhyme.  This usually happens in the car, when everyone's strapped in and needs something interesting to think about.  

Hey! I've got a word: BEE. 

Bee, Bee, what rhymes with bee? 

Bee, Bee, how about...."  

(child shouts)  TREE! 

Bee, tree, bee and tree. 

I like to rhyme bee and tree.

Repeat with new words until you reach grandma's house.  To make this game a little easier, prep your child with a few words that rhyme, or let older kids give hints to your toddler, or let older kids play a few rounds to show preschoolers how it's played. Be sure that everyone cheers when a rhyme is found.

Reading and Reason

Nursery rhymes also often incorporate very short stories with beginnings, middles, and ends. Jack went up the hill, then he fell down, then Jill fell down. These short tales give practice in sequencing events and understanding the flow of stories: more early literacy skills!

At home, make pictures to go with your favorite rhymes (we give them to you in Sound Beginnings class for some rhymes).  As your child recites the rhyme, have her put the pictures in the correct order, like my little daughter does here:

Finally, your rhymes will offer lots of alliteration (Goosey, Goosey, Gander) and onomatopoeia (Baaa, baaa, black sheep), again giving tots lots and lots of experience with words and how they work with phonics.  Words that start with the same letter have the same starting sound. Amazing!

The more words and rhymes your child learns, the bigger her repertoire to draw from while making these connections and internalizing how phonics works.

Math Skills

Nursery rhymes have patterns of syllables and rhymes. It's one of the traits that makes them so enjoyable and musical! You know what I mean...

Doo dum tweedle Doo

Doo dum tweedle Doo

Doo dum diddle dum diddle dum.

Doo dum tweedle Doo

Doo dum tweedle Doo

Doo dum diddle dum diddle dum!

Internalizing how patterns flow strengthens mathematical thinking and helps in memorization. 

Many rhymes also sneak in conceptual math words (none, many, few, plenty) as well as counting numbers, which means even more early math skills to internalize.  

One, Two, Three, Four, Five

Once I caught a fish alive

Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten

Then I let it go again.

One, Two, Buckle my shoe.

Three, Four, shut the door.

Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard
to get her poor dog a bone
but when she go there the cupboard was bare
and so her poor dog had none.

If you missed it, check out our post on PART 1: Rhymes teach Speech and Vocabulary: 

Or continue on to PART 3: Rhymes teach Coordination, Social Skills, and Music!.

Don't miss the bonus gift for you 
if you make it through part 3!

-Gina Weibel, M.S.

Let's Play Music teacher

Nursery Rhymes Teach Coordination, Social Skills, and MUSIC!

Here we are in Part 3 of a post series on what your child learns from nursery rhymes. Hop over and review Part 1 (Speech and Vocabulary) or Part 2 (Reading and Math) if you missed them. 

This is the final post where I get to give you a BONUS PRIZE for reading all 3 parts! (keep going!)

Coordination

When we learn nursery rhymes in Sound Beginnings class, we like to incorporate movement and finger plays that naturally lead to development of coordination and whole-body control.

Jumping over a candle like "Jack be nimble" or using the fingers to show "One, two, three, four, five, once I caught a fish alive" give practice for large and small-motor control and lead to improved coordination.

Just speaking the rhymes and forming the words quickly and with rhythm is a workout for the mouth, tongue an vocal chords! (Go back to part 1 for more mouth workouts)

It takes even more practice to do actions to the beat. Chanting and acting with fingers/arms/body builds neural pathways for coordination!

Social Skills

Sharing rhymes that we memorize as a class and chant together is extremely social.

Children really feel that they belong to the group when they participate in a shared experience like reciting or singing together.  "I know how to do this. I belong to this group. I know what we do here. I am safe here." 

Holding hands and making simple games from the rhymes (Ring around the Rosie) helps children connect with their parents and peers. Positive physical touch with parents (clapping hands, dancing, hugging) during rhymes also strengthens bonding through play. 

When your child is bored or sad, holding her in your lap and whispering a nursery rhyme is a fantastic way to soothe, comfort, and bond. Memorize some rhymes!

How else do rhymes help with social skills? Characters in rhymes exhibit different emotions, giving children a larger vocabulary for identifying and labeling their own emotions.  Rhymes can give a platform for imagination and creative play acting out the characters.

Why did the little dog laugh when he saw the cow jump over the moon?

How did Jack and Jill feel when they fell down the hill?

How would you feel if a fish bit the finger on your hand?

Why do you think the two little blackbirds go everywhere together?

MUSIC!

Did you see where we were heading with this? 

A broad musical foundation requires students to have control of the singing and speaking mechanisms. To have an ear practiced in hearing pitch, volume, and rhythm. To have coordination of the hands and body that will be used to play an instrument. To socially connect with other musicians and family members through music.  

Those are the skills we just itemized as being strengthened through nursery rhymes! Nursery rhymes teach fundamental music skills.

When we chant rhymes in class, we always love to establish a steady beat for the children to match and maintain. Adding words is the next-level: addition of rhythm to a beat. Yet another fundamental skill gleaned from rhymes.

Sound Beginnings students will be ready to excel in music!

BONUS:Finger Plays Library!

You know there are MANY reasons to enjoy rhymes with your child, so here are several nursery rhymes with actions/ finger plays for you to enjoy with your child.  Yes, you'll be teaching all kinds of amazing things, but you'll also be having fun, preventing boredom, and sharing love with your child!  ENJOY!




In case you missed Part 1: Speech and Vocabulary in Rhymes
or Part 2: Reading and Math in Rhymes
you can circle back and read them!

- Gina Weibel, M.S.
Let's Play Music teacher

A Happy Ending for the Three Blind Mice. Why folk music?

You child might be asking you: Why were the mice blind? Why did the farmer's wife chase them!?  What happened next!?

Rest easy once you've heard the extended story with pictures and happy ending, in this online (and offline) storybook by John Ivimey. The mice even end up with a pet cockroach…so friendly!

CLICK HERE TO READ THE BOOK

History of Three Blind Mice

This nursery rhyme became mainstream in children's literature in the 1842 publishing of "The Nursery Rhymes of England". However, it was originally written with music in 1609.  It is speculated that the origin of the tale of the mice came from the Catholic Queen Mary I (Bloody Mary), Henry VIII's only surviving daughter, who was known for her merciless hounding of Protestants.  The story could relate to Mary's 1555 execution by burning of three Protestant bishops.  The mice's blindness could be interpreted as faithlessness, alluding to their rejection of Catholicism.

Mary Tudor is also featured in the nursery rhyme "Mary Mary, quite Contrary", enjoyed by our Sound Beginnings Students.  The 'silver bells' and 'cockle shells' in the garden likely referenced torture devices like thumbscrews, and the 'maids' referred to The Maid (a pre-guillotine device for beheading).

Why Do We Sing Nursery Rhymes?

Let's Play Music adopts many Kodaly concepts of music education.  Authentic folk music has short form, pentatonic style, and simple, repetetive language.  The clear, simple, musical styles in nursery rhymes provide the perfect foundation for mastering beginning rhythmic and melodic skills.  Mastery of skills and concepts in progressive levels of difficulty is critical for the long-term musical success desired by Let's Play Music families.  'Three Blind Mice' is a melody that has withstood the test of time; any tune with poor melodic or rhythmic qualities would not have been passed from generation to generation for over 400 years!

"Kodaly felt that simple, expressive forms of nursery songs and folk music were most suitable for children because they were living music, not fabricated or contrived for pedagogical purposes. The language of folk music tends to be simple, drawn from speech patterns familiar to children even before they enter school."

"Kodaly felt a close relationship between the music of the people and the music of great composers. He believed that a love for the masterworks could be cultivated through a knowledge of and a love for one's own folk music."

Folk music plays an important artistic role for each musician: providing a cultural musical background.  In the Let's Play Music effort to educate the whole musician, we practice singing several folk songs to provide students with an ageless cultural background from which to draw from as they begin creating their own music.  

A fantastic way to understand the simplicity and richness of folk music is to peek at samples of folk music from several different cultures (click here).  You'll notice that each cultural video shows simple music, with only a few musicians, using instruments characteristic of their country.  Folk music often takes place outside for anyone to dance to.  Now that you've joined Let's Play Music, you'll have many opportunities to play and dance to folk music, too.

Let's Play Music also adheres to the 9 National Standards for Music Education.  Standard number 9 is: understand music in relation to history and culture. We offer a valuable string to the past when we teach children that music has been around since before even their parents were born!  Music has a role in life beyond just entertainment, and even beyond music education.  Your music teacher might let your child in on the secret that today they learned a song that is over 400 years old!  Back in that century, singing rhymes and songs to each other was the way people recorded history.  

A Little More Mi-Re-Do

Of course we love the simple melodies in folk songs since they give our beginning students the perfect complexity of tune to examine and identify.  Your child should be able to  hear and identify the mi-re-do in 'Three Blind Mice' and soon will be able to figure out how to pick out the entire tune, note-by-note on bells or keyboard from carefully listening and identifying solfeg. Encourage your child to 'mess around' with the bells, tell him that he just might able to figure out a well-known song, and chances are he'll come to you with a big proud smile once he gets it!

'Hot Cross Buns' is another easy mi-re-do tune you may want to sing and play with your child this week.  It actually ONLY uses these 3 notes!  (MRD, MRD, DDDD, RRRR, MRD).  If you let your child in on the 3-bell secret, and challenge him to pick out the melody, he'll master it like a jigsaw puzzle.  

Like any puzzle, we start with the easy puzzles that only have a few pieces.  Eventually your child's ears will be ready for more complex puzzles.  The ability to sing melodies from memory and pick them out on a keyboard is an exercise in relative pitch / intervallic ear training, some of the basic skills that Let's Play Music incorporates in our training of the whole musician.

-Gina Weibel, M.S.

Related Articles:

- Musical Superpower: Develop Perfect Pitch

- Ear Training: Learn to hear Intervals

Rhythm and Rhymes Articles

Check out these articles on RHYTHM and RHYMES: 

Can you keep a steady beat? Take our quiz and find out...then learn the difference between BEAT and RHYTHM. Read more here.

Meet the BLUE BUGS! We use rhythm syllables to teach accurate and easy rhythm reading- find out how. Read the article here. 

How can building blocks and jungle drums help teach musical rhythms? Check out clever ways to think about subdividing beats in this article. Read more here.

The autoharp gives students a chance to read chords, play accompaniment, sing, and keep rhythm. Even without a harp at home, you can practice skills from class: read this post to see how.

We sing several traditional nursery songs in each of our programs. Find out why (and read to find out what happens next to the 3 blind mice) in this post.

Sun, Moon, and Stars: Why we teach patterns in Sound Beginnings class. Learn the reasons AND get ideas for playing with patterns in your daily life here.

Jack be Nimble, Jack be Quick! Here are 3 more fun ways to enjoy this nursery rhyme and extend learning at home. Read more here. 

If you love to sing The Itsy Bitsy Spider, be sure to check out these extension activities and crafts for more fun at home. Read more here.

Yankee Doodle Comes to LPM Class!

History of Yankee Doodle

"Yankee Doodle" was first sung as a ditty used by the British to mock the rag-tag, disheveled American soldiers.  Yankee began as a negative term to identify Americans.  The word itself might possibly have begun as a Native American mispronunciation of "English," resulting in "Yengeesh."  Doodle is an old word for a fool or simpleton.  Macaroni  was not pasta but a term for a man dressed in a ridiculous style.  So, this is a song about a rag-tag simpleton who thinks he is fancy even when he is ridiculous!

Ironically, this song was adopted and adored by early Americans proud to be identified as Yankees.  It has even become the official state song of Connecticut! Just as Yankees took control of the British during the Revolution, they also took command of this song and sang it proudly as an anthem to tease their foes.  

Lyrics and Tune

Lyrics were written in 1755 by an English doctor, Dr. Shackburg during the French and Indian War to describe those ramshackle colonists fighting alongside the well-dressed British soldiers.  Because the tune was popular and easy to remember (it's a turn on the nursery rhyme tune Lucy Locket), new versions of lyrics were written during the American Revolution and the Civil War. Of course the South sang lyrics mocking the North, and the vice versa. The song has over 190 versions from different dates.

The song was revived in 1904 by George M. Cohan with "Yankee Doodle Boy", providing the verses most of us are familiar with. You can hear them here.  John Philip Sousa was so fond of the tune that he used it in many of his works.

Since the lyrics to this melody have been written and rewritten many times for inumerable uses, let's write some Yankee Doodle verses  just for Let's Play Music! If you and your child come up with additional LPM verses, please add them in the comments!

Yankee Doodle went to class

Singin' a soprano

He played the harp, he played the bells

And then he played piano.

*Chorus* Yankee Doodle Do Mi Re,

Yankee Here We Go Now

Mind the solfeg and the chords

and sing Sol La Ti Do, Oh!

A Red Balloon went up up up

as Yankee Doodle watched it.

When it came down the Major scale

He reached right up and caught it!

Yankee Doodle sang on pitch
He knew that 'Do is  Ho-ome'
He always followed Echo Ed
and never sang alo-ne.

Bill Grogan's goat was eating shirts

All down his throat they'd go-

He coughed one up and stopped a train

With just Sol La Ti Do-o!

Yankee Doodle had two pets
in little turtle she-lls,
seconds, thirds, and fourths and fifths,
he learned them very we-ll!

Yankee Doodle found the root

Of each and every chord

He harmonized I, IV, and V

And rarely needed more!

Why Use Folk Music?

True folk tunes withstand the test of time.  If Yankee Doodle had poor melodic or rhythmic qualities, it would not have been recreated over 190 times and passed down through generations of oral history.  These simple tunes have excellent, simple structure for students to study when developing an understanding of musical composition and theory or experimenting with playing styles as we do in Orange semester. Even the greatest composers began with a foundation in folk music.

And in terms of your musical foundation, hold on to your Orange book because there are many ways to progress as a musician as you play with Yankee Doodle.  Here are some ideas to help you progress, especially if you'd like to keep practicing into summer to complete them all:

Easy: Play block chords as written and sing the melody.

Nice: Play 2-handed marching style chords and sing the meldoy.

Double Nice: Play 2-handed marching style while your friend plays the RH melody an octave above, then switch roles.

 Fantastic: Play the melody with RH and block chords with LH.

Superstar: Play the melody with RH and play marching LH chords. 

Tricky: In some of my lyrics above I refer to Ti Sol La Ti Do Do as the last two measures of the song, which is a very common ending for this tune. In your Orange songbook, another common variation (Ti Ti La Ti Do Do) is written; it's easier for you to play since you won't have to move your RH in a great jump to get down to Sol.  If you would like to play the Sol La Ti Do ending, give it a try!

Brilliant: Now that you know how to examine a song, figure out the chords, and play them in 2-handed marching style, try it with the song Hurry Hurry Drive the Firetruck from your Green songbook. You still have your Green book, right!? First use careful listening to decide which chords are needed for each measure.  Use half notes, just like we did in Yankee Doodle. (Here's a hint: you will only need red and yellow chords.)  Then proceed through all the levels of mastery as listed above. Tip: when playing measure 4 RH, use fingering 1 2 1 'pop'2.  You'll have to really reach that 2 finger over to the G.  If you have a younger sibling in Let's Play Music, s/he is really going to love playing a duet with you on this song.

Have fun and post your additional lyrics to share in the comments!

- Gina Weibel, M.S.

Other Posts of Interest:

A Happy Ending for 3 Blind Mice; Why use folk music?

Seven Foundational Elements of Sound Beginnings

The Sound Beginnings music program prepares children for success in kindergarten and Let's Play Music. That's fantastic! How is it done?

Today's post will walk you through the seven research-based elements that stimulate growth in the areas particularly crucial to the development of your young child. These elements make up the foundation of the Sound Beginnings curriculum and help us get to the heart of an effective class.

Literacy and Kindergarten Skills

Sound Beginnings not only teaches music, it also introduces children to kindergarten concepts like colors, rhyming, manners, telling time, shapes, calendars, name recognition, counting, adding, literacy, and sequencing. 

Research has proven that music has a powerful effect on language learning. As children sing songs and recite nursery rhymes during class, they learn new vocabulary, develop auditory discrimination, enhance phonemic awareness, and improve their memory skills. Sound Beginnings classes also prepare children to read by teaching tracking left to right, verbal sequencing, and concepts about print during musical story time.

I imagine (I have an active imagination) that the creators of Sound Beginnings had a conversation like this:

  "Let's select songs to use in class. We'll definitely need plenty of simple melodies that are easy to learn and in the correct pitch range so the students can internalize musical patterns."
  "Okay, we have tons of options here. What do you want the words to be about?"
  "Oh yeah, words. Kids just love words."
  "Well, as we all know, music is a powerful tool for teaching just about anything. I passed my college chemistry class by singing the solubility rules song, so I'm sure we could teach kids about kindergarten skills like telling time, calendars, colors, days of the week...you know... and they'd be learning music at the same time."
  "That's super efficient! I'm so excited I feel like singing about it right now!"

Hey parents: you can use this music-class superpower to your life: anytime you want your toddler to learn a skill or behavior, add a song! Here's the song I sing (over and over and over) until my kids get their seat belts on. As you can guess, my teenagers get buckled before I finish the first word:

Whenever I get into the car

I put on my seat belt before we go far

'Cuz Mom will not drive until she hears 'click'

so put on your seat belt, and please be quick!

Rhythm and Beat

Keeping a steady beat is the precursor to all accurate rhythm-making. In class we clap, pat, stomp, jump, flap our arms, and play simple instruments to the beat. We imitate rhythmic patters with our voices, on instruments and with our bodies. We incorporate eurythmics (movement-based rhythm training) that is perfect for toddlers.

Curious to see if you can keep the beat? Take a simple test like this one. You'll listen to the drum to find the beat, then you'll tap along to match the beat, and then... all by yourself... you'll play a steady beat. (Post in the comments and tell me what your score was) Wahoo! 

Once your child internalizes these beat-basic skills, she'll really be ready to make music.  The American Council of Piano Performers, in a post on how to perform, says "the audience will rarely notice an error in pitch, but they will ALWAYS notice a disruption in rhythm."

Getting the beat right is fundamentally important, so we spend plenty of time on practicing with our toddlers.

Voice and Pitch Development

The singing voice is the foundation of music education. Sound Beginnings channels the young voice into beautiful singing by providing proper vocal modeling in the correct range. Solfege hand signs are used to teach pitch relationships. Ear training is emphasized and a minor third (SOL-MI) pattern is used to teach in-tune singing.

I just love solfege. It gives us words to talk about what we're singing and gives us a tactile way to feel in space what we're hearing in our ear. It takes challenge of singing and makes it a whole-body learning experience. In these articles (Part I, Part II, Part III) I explain what solfege is, why we love it, and how you can use it.

My active imagination thinks the creators of Sound Beginnings and Let's Play Music had a conversation like this:

"Alright folks. What tools are we gonna use for teaching these toddlers to sing?"
"Um, well, I have an idea...it's something we did in all of our college voice classes and sight-singing classes. You know... solfege."
"Are you crazy? Toddlers don't go to college. Young children learn through full-body involvement and integrating as many senses as possible. Young children need to be active and physical to learn. Give me something I can use, people."
"Well, that's just it- solfege is a way to use your hands and body to better focus on what you are hearing, and involve more of your body into what you are making your voice do."
"In that case, we'd be fools not to use solfege with toddlers and children! I'm so excited I think I'll start singing about this!"

Fine Motor Skills

Fine motor skills involve hand and finger use and play a valuable part in higher-level learning skills like writing. As students participate in finger plays to favorite nursery rhymes and American Sign Language (ASL) they gain finger dexterity. As they manipulate instruments and tactile props in class they develop stronger muscles in their hands and wrists.

Looking for more fun ways to strengthen little hands? Check out this post with (piano and non-piano) ways to encourage growth and strength. Not to worry: Let's Play Music class is designed to let your child's ear and mind develop as fast and awesomely as they can, even though we know finger strength will take a few years to catch up. That's one reason we use bells and autoharp in year one.

Gross Motor Skills

If you peek into a Sound Beginnings class, you will see skipping, crawling, dancing, and playing. Children learn best by doing! Full body movement builds muscle strength and hand-eye coordination while developing balance in young children. Gross motor development also aids in brain hemisphere development.

The basis for the importance of movement and sensory experiences was derived from studies which compared brain structures of animals raised in various environmentally normal, deprived, and enriched settings. The enriched settings provided the opportunity to interact with toys, obstacles, and treadmills. Research led to the conclusion that stimulation is a significant factor in overall brain development; animals from enriched environments had larger brains with more synaptic connections. It is suggested that physical activity is a significant determinant in early development of the overall brain, not just development of motor skills.

Whatever you are doing with your child, take her to activities where she can move around and be active while learning.

Classical Music Experience

Sound Beginings classes teach intelligent listening and understanding of classical form in a fun and interactive way. Each semester we study the timbre of specific instruments and how they are divided into family groupings. Our 'smart moves' dances involve the whole body in an enjoyable classical music experience.

Really great dancers (and aerobic instructors, right?) use their body to follow the beat of the music, listen to the patterns and form of the music, and create movement that "feels like" the music itself. This awareness of how music is put together means your child will learn to anticipate what comes next in classical songs and enjoy them even more. When the Orange semester of Let's Play Music comes around, he'll be composing his own songs using the same concepts of form and pattern!

And why should you be interested in the fact that little Johnny is developing a love of listening to the classical genre? Loads of recent research shows that listening to classical improves memory, boosts creativity, lowers blood pressure, boosts brain power, fights depression, improves productivity, and makes you taller. (My active imagination came up with the part about being taller.)

Parent Bonding

A child learns when a child feels loved. In Sound Beginnings we teach parents how to play with their child in an educational and nurturing way. Purposeful touching, eye contact and partner activities develop the highly significant parent/child relationship.

In our blog post on creating relationships, we give some tips for having a strong relationship with your family, and for how to grow closer together through music.  In class, your actions teach your child, "This is a fun thing I like to do. I like to play with you. I like to be with you. You're important to be. This is something we can learn and have fun with together." 

When music is a venue in which you build a positive relationship and make memories of happy moments, students love music and are more willing to work at becoming musicians!


Now that you know the seven foundational elements of Sound Beginnings, find a teacher for your youngster, or forward this blog post to someone who has a child ages 2-4 so they can reap the benefits of this great program.  See you in class!

-Gina Weibel, M.S.
Let's Play Music and Sound Beginnings Teacher