Build Life Skills With Music
By Caron Goode
Love, respect and appreciation
for music are easy to share with our children and build life skills
at the same time. During the first years of our child’s
life, musical skills build self-esteem and enhance expression.
Musical rhythms spur motor development. Learning melodies and
words stimulates listening capacity and help children develop
receptive language.
Specific areas of child development
and learning are positively affected by exposure to and training
in music. Preschoolers given piano and voice lessons, for example,
have been found to improve dramatically in their ability to put
together picture puzzles of animals. Playing the piano at the
preschool age influences development of the cortex, the part of
the brain used for thinking, talking, seeing, hearing and creating.*
Music training contributes to the ability to learn or enhance
mathematics skills.
Music clearly is a resource for
living, growing and learning and can be an integral part of our
children’s growing experiences.
Music is controlled movement of
sound, in time.* Music is three basic components: sound + rhythm
+ melody = music.
Exploring sound
To help children understand music, it is helpful to look at each
component separately. First there is sound, one that we make or
one from another source. A few examples of sound are a bird chirping,
a teakettle whistling and a child banging on a pot with a spoon.
If music were compared to a painting, sound would be the background
color.
In our bodies, sound corresponds
with our central nervous system. A pleasant sound opens and expands
us. It can energize or calm us. A shrieking sound puts our nerves
on edge. Like the background in a painting, sound is the first
step in creating music.
Here are some ways to
explore sound with our children.
• Have your children listen to the sounds around them.
How many different sounds can they find in the kitchen or backyard?
• Encourage children to be creative making sounds. Have
them use their voices or household objects to make sound. Allow
them to make pretty, irritating or silly sounds. They are all
music if they reflect creative exploration or honest feelings.
The purpose for creating sound
is not necessarily to make “beautiful music” but to
foster self-expression and open up our children’s ears to
the world around them.
Relishing rhythm
The second component of music is rhythm. Rhythm defines and organizes
the sound through a beat. For example, is the whistling of the
teakettle long and steady or short and choppy? Is the child’s
banging on the pot fast and upbeat or smooth and slow?
In a painting, the rhythm would
be the overall movement or flow of the composition. When you first
look at the painting, where do your eyes go? Is the painting easy
to look at, or is it busy and annoying? This is its rhythm.
In our bodies, rhythm corresponds
to our own internal body rhythm — our pulse and breath.
If the musical beat is quick and steady, our heartbeat and body
movements will mirror it. If we are tired, listening to African
drumming can kick our body back into gear. On the other hand,
if a 2-year-old is running around out of control, slow rhythmic
music like Bach or Vivaldi restores inner calm and slows most
children down. Explore and add rhythm to the sounds that children
make.
• Have your children play
with different beats: fast, slow, steady and erratic.
• Have them practice listening to the different rhythms
around them, like the water dripping from the faucet or the
ticking of a clock.
• Ask them if they can feel the vibration of a musical
beat in their bodies, and if so, where? How do the different
rhythms feel in their body? How do their feet want to move with
the different beats?
• Try hand clapping to the rhythm of a poem and foot tapping
to a favorite piece of music. These activities are every child’s
favorite free entertainment.
Making melody
Finally there is melody. Melody corresponds to our emotions. It
gives sound and rhythm its feeling and sensual quality. It is
the part of music that expresses the hills and valleys of an individual’s
experience. It goes straight to our heart and feeling center.
Melody can uplift our spirit, calm us during times of stress,
or move us to tears.
Returning to the painting metaphor,
melody would be the overall feeling that the painting evokes as
we look at it. Does the painting draw us in and create a feeling
of peace, excitement, distress or discomfort? Introducing melody
to the earlier sounds and rhythms will help children learn self-expression.
• Have them hum a tune
or create a melody, adding emotion to sound.
• Experiment expressing sounds that are emotional: happy,
sad, funny, etc.
Melody turns a sound into a personal
and unique statement. By playing with sound, rhythm and melody,
our children discover a new vocabulary and tool to use for expression
when words are hard to find.
We can use creativity and imagination
to choose different styles of music by which our children can
express their feelings, relax, stimulate their minds or allow
their creative juices to flow. A variety of selections, rhythms,
tones and melodies allows children to develop their own musical
tastes and sparks their natural curiosity to explore the world
of music on their own.
© Caron Goode
NFO Attachment Parenting
Editor Caron Goode, Ed.D., has written six books on child development,
two monographs and co-authored two additional books. Her articles
have appeared in more than 200 national newspapers and more than
two dozen websites. She and her husband, Tom Goode, ND, direct
Inspired
Parenting and Inspired Living International in Tucson, Arizona,
offering offer parent education workshops, Full Wave Breathing™
and Mindbody Talk™ wellness workshops.
